50 Pfennig

Geldern issued this note in 1918 under the emergency currency provisions that had, by that point, become routine across German municipal administrations — the Reichsbank's coin shortage, acute since 1916, pushed hundreds of small towns into the notgeld business whether they wanted to be there or not. Gebr. Parcus of Munich was one of the more prolific commercial printers serving this market, producing notgeld for municipalities across Bavaria and the Rhineland with reliable if unsentimental workmanship.

The Bürgermeister's signature — Dr. Werners — carries the full legal weight here; Stadt Geldern had no banking apparatus of its own, so the mayor's office was the issuing authority in every practical sense.