50 Pfennig Edler and Krische

Edler & Krische was a Hannover-based manufacturer of printing inks and related chemical products — an industrial firm pressed into the role of currency issuer by the acute coin shortages of the First World War's final year. Germany's Notgeld system of 1914–1923 permitted municipalities, businesses, and institutions to issue their own small-denomination emergency notes when official coinage disappeared from circulation, hoarded or melted down faster than the Reichsbank could replace it.

A private company issuing its own fractional scrip to pay workers and facilitate local transactions was entirely legal under the arrangement, if administratively chaotic. Notes from commercial issuers like this one were typically redeemed quickly and discarded — survivors owe their existence largely to collectors who were already active in the Notgeld market before the war had even ended.