50 Pfennig Borken

Borken's 1918 emergency issue belongs to the first wave of German municipal notgeld, authorized under wartime necessity as small-denomination coins vanished from circulation — hoarded, melted, or simply unproducible given the demands on metal. Carl Schleicher & Schüll in Düren were among the more reliable provincial printers of the period, handling output for dozens of Westphalian municipalities simultaneously that year.

The Magistrat signatures of Müller and Kettelhack anchor the note's legal validity at the local level, a formality that mattered — unsigned notgeld from this period was occasionally refused at point of sale.