50 Pfennig Amtssparkasse

Amtssparkasse zu Osterholz was a district savings institution — not a commercial bank — issuing this note under the emergency currency provisions that flooded Germany with Kleingeldersatz following the post-WWI coinage shortage. Osterholz, a small administrative district in Lower Saxony, relied on local printers rather than the major security firms. Casten & Suhling, based in Bremen, handled a range of such municipal and institutional commissions in the region, though they were primarily a commercial print house rather than a specialist currency printer.

The guilloche underprint is the only concession to anti-counterfeiting — entirely adequate for a note whose face value made forgery economically pointless.