50 Pfennig Districts Series - Issue 17: Lichtenberg

Lichtenberg was incorporated into Greater Berlin in 1920 under the Greater Berlin Act, which amalgamated eight cities, 59 rural communities, and 27 estate districts into a single administrative unit. This notgeld series — issued by the Magistrat of the newly unified city — was a direct response to the chronic small-change shortage that plagued Germany in the early Weimar years, when hoarding of metal coinage had emptied everyday transactions of any functional currency below the Mark level.

The district-specific series gave each of Berlin's newly absorbed boroughs its own identity within a unified civic issue — a quiet piece of administrative politics rendered in paper.