50 Pfennig

German municipal Notgeld of this period wasn't issued on a whim — by 1917, the Reichsbank's coin melting program and wartime metal shortages had so thoroughly drained small change from circulation that towns and savings banks across Germany were legally compelled to fill the gap themselves. The Amtssparkasse zu Bochum, a municipal savings institution serving the industrial Ruhr, was among hundreds of such bodies that stepped into the void.

Bochum's industrial output — coal and steel, overwhelmingly — made its local economy particularly cash-hungry at the transactional level, which likely accelerated how quickly small denomination notes became necessary here.