50 Pfennig

Röhrigshöfe is a small locality in Thuringia, and like thousands of German municipalities during the hyperinflationary emergency of the early 1920s, it issued its own Notgeld to fill the void left by a collapse in small-denomination coinage and national currency confidence. The Werbeverlag A.G. in Bremen was a commercial advertising and print house that pivoted heavily into Notgeld production during this period — a profitable sideline, since municipalities paid for the printing and collectors drove secondary demand.

The artist signature "Grosscla" on the vignette is the kind of detail that distinguishes Notgeld from purely utilitarian emergency scrip. Many municipalities commissioned decorative designs specifically to attract the collector market, knowing unsold notes were pure profit.