50 Pfennig Klostergutsverwaltung Ettal

Ettal Abbey's estate administration issued this note in 1917 as part of Germany's sprawling Notgeld phenomenon — wartime metal shortages forced thousands of municipalities, businesses, and institutions to print their own small-denomination emergency currency. That a Benedictine monastery's agricultural management arm became a de facto currency issuer says something about how thoroughly the German economy had fragmented by mid-war.

J. P. Himmer of Augsburg was a natural choice — a well-established regional printer with a long track record of ecclesiastical and commercial work. The abbey and the press are barely forty kilometers apart.