50 Pfennig Dellbrücker Volksbank

Dellbrück was a small independent community east of Cologne, and its cooperative savings bank — the Genossenschaftsbank with unlimited liability implied by "e.G.m.u.H." — issued this Notgeld during the acute small-change famine that gripped Germany in 1921 as postwar inflation made metal coinage economically worthless to mint. Heiss & Co. in Cologne-Lindenthal was a regional commercial printer, not a specialist banknote house, which is exactly the kind of firm municipalities and cooperatives turned to when the Reichsbank could not supply sufficient fractional currency fast enough.

The dual signatures of Grünhrs and Hillmann represent the cooperative's required dual-authorization structure under German cooperative law.