50 Pfennig Amts-Sparkasse

Hausberge an der Porta is a small town at the Porta Westfalica gap — the point where the Weser cuts through the Teutoburg Forest ridge — and the Amts-Sparkasse there was a district savings institution rather than a municipal bank. In 1921, with the Reichsmark system already buckling under postwar inflation, local Sparkassen across Westphalia began issuing their own Kleingeld-Ersatz to keep commerce moving when small coin simply vanished from circulation.

J. & C. Meyer in Bad Oeynhausen, just a few kilometers east, printed this series — a short-distance commission typical of Westphalian Notgeld production, where proximity kept costs and delivery times manageable.