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50 Pfennig

Issuer Stadt Sondershausen (Magistrat der Kreisfreien Stadt Sondershausen), Thuringia
Year 1922
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Size 90 × 60 mm
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Obverse lettering 50 PFENNIGE
NOTGELD KREISFREIE STADT SONDERSHAUSEN
DER MAGISTRAT
DIESER SCHEIN ERLISCHT EINEN MONAT NACH AUFRUF
Reverse description Printed in dark brown on a blue-grey ground, the reverse is framed by an ornate rectangular border of interlocking scrollwork enclosing lateral panels each bearing the denomination '50' and 'PF'. The central white vignette panel contains an expressionist woodcut-style illustration of a rotund, dishevelled figure in a bowler hat carrying a bag, rendered in bold outline. A promotional legend identifying Sondershausen as a health resort runs across the top, with a rhyming motto inscribed below the central vignette.
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Comments

Sondershausen was the former capital of the tiny principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, which had ceased to exist barely four years before this note was issued — the prince abdicated in November 1918. By 1922, the municipal government was printing its own fractional emergency currency, as were hundreds of German towns, because the Reichsbank simply could not produce small-denomination coinage fast enough to keep pace with accelerating inflation.

The Magistrat designation reflects the town's brief status as a kreisfreie Stadt, administratively independent from the surrounding district. That status would not survive the broader Thuringian territorial reorganizations of the mid-1920s.

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