50 Pfennig

Gera's 1921 Notgeld issue belongs to the wave of municipal emergency currency that flooded Germany as post-WWI coin shortages left small transactions impossible. The Thuringian city, like hundreds of others, printed its own fractional notes under implicit tolerance from the Reichsbank rather than any formal authorization — a makeshift system that worked until hyperinflation made the denominations meaningless anyway.

The watermarked paper distinguishes this from cheaper Notgeld struck on plain stock, suggesting the city used pre-sourced security paper rather than whatever was available locally.