50 Pfennig

Mittelwalde — now Międzylesie in southwestern Poland — was a small Silesian border town whose municipality issued this note as part of the broader Kleingeldersatz emergency coinage that swept German-speaking territories from roughly 1916 onward. The acute shortage of circulating small coinage during the First World War forced thousands of German municipalities, companies, and institutions to print their own fractional paper, and Stadt Mittelwalde was among the more minor issuers — making surviving examples less common than those from larger Silesian towns like Breslau or Görlitz.

After the war, most Notgeld of this type was redeemed and pulped, though many collectors hoarded issues specifically to prevent redemption, which complicates any attempt to assess true surviving quantities.