Catalog
50 Pfennig
| Issuer | Stadt Karlshafen (City of Karlshafen) |
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| Year | |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | Notgeld issue of 50 Pfennige from the town of Karlshafen, with the denomination and issuing authority rendered in period letterpress typography. The central vignette carries a local civic or heraldic motif typical of Hessian Notgeld issues, framed by ornamental borders. Text inscriptions identify the issuing municipality and the face value. |
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| Reverse description | The reverse carries the validity conditions and legal text of the emergency currency issue, set in letterpress within a decorative border arrangement. The denomination and the obligation of the issuing city are restated, with additional typographic ornamentation consistent with Notgeld production standards of the Gebrüder Gotthelft printing house in Cassel. |
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| Comments |
Karlshafen — officially Bad Karlshafen since 1977 — was a planned Huguenot settlement founded in 1699 by Landgrave Karl of Hesse-Kassel, who intended it as the terminus of a canal linking the Weser to the Rhine. The canal was never finished. The town remained small, which makes its issuance of Notgeld entirely typical of the inflationary chaos that swept German municipalities after 1918, when the central money supply simply failed to cover everyday transactions at the local level.
Gebrüder Gotthelft in Cassel handled a significant volume of Hessian municipal Notgeld work during this period — a regional printer filling a regional vacuum.