50 Pfennig Bonifatius Series

Ohrdruf's 1921 Pfennig notgeld belongs to the wave of municipal small-change currency that flooded Thuringia — and the rest of Germany — as metal coinage effectively vanished from circulation in the inflationary spiral following the war. The Bonifatius series specifically references the town's historical claim that St. Boniface, the Anglo-Saxon missionary who became the apostle of the Germans, founded a monastery at Ohrdruf in 725 AD, the earliest recorded Benedictine house on German soil.

A print run of over twelve million for a town of a few thousand residents is not unusual — these notes circulated far beyond their issuing municipality, collected and traded as a matter of course. Whether they actually cleared debts locally is another question entirely.