50 Pfennig

Ettenheim's 1922 notgeld issue arrived during the acute inflationary spiral that was rapidly making Reichsmark coinage disappear from everyday commerce — municipalities across Baden scrambled to fill the gap with locally authorized scrip. Otto Angst, a regional artist with ties to the decorative arts movement active in southwestern Germany, handled the design work here, which gives this particular issue a slightly more considered visual program than the rushed municipal printings common elsewhere in the notgeld flood.

Ettenheim itself is a small Ortenau town with a particular historical footnote: it was the residence of the Duc d'Enghien before Napoleon had him seized and executed in 1804. Whether that history informed Angst's design choices is unrecorded.