50 Pfennig

Schmalkalden — a small Thuringian town far better known as the site of the 1531 Protestant defensive alliance than as a center of currency production — briefly became its own monetary authority during the Weimar inflation spiral. The Kreisausschuss, the district administrative committee of the Herrschaft Schmalkalden, issued this Notgeld through Feodor Wilisch, a local press with no particular banking pedigree. Designer Kurt Jäckel is credited, which was unusual enough for small-denomination emergency issues of this period that it suggests the district took some civic pride in the series.