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50 Pfennig
| Issuer | Municipality of Gangelt (Prussian province of Rhine) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1921 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse is occupied entirely by a vivid full-colour lithographic vignette illustrating the plundering of Gangelt by Hessian troops in 1643 during the Thirty Years' War. The scene renders soldiers dragging and abusing townspeople in a cobblestoned street, with the town church visible in the middle distance and buildings in flames at left. A rectangular caption panel at the foot of the note carries the explanatory inscription in Gothic lettering. |
| Reverse lettering | Ausplünderung durch die Hessen - 1643 |
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| Comments |
Gangelt is a small market town in the Selfkant district, which has the distinction of being the last territory returned to West Germany by the Netherlands — not until 1963, making it briefly the westernmost point of the Netherlands after 1949. The 1921 notgeld issue predates all of that, but the town's position in a perpetually contested border zone gives even routine municipal emergency currency a slightly unusual geographic weight.
Pfennig-denomination notgeld from small Rhenish municipalities was typically a short-lived convenience measure during the coin shortage of 1920–1922. Gangelt's issue is unremarkable in format but scarce simply because so little survived redemption.