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50 Pfennig Kultur und Sportwoche Hamburg
| Issuer | Hamburg, City of |
|---|---|
| Year | 1921 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | Central vignette shows a classical Ionic column before a red underprint of the Hamburg coat of arms (three towers), with a male athletic figure in dynamic stride holding an olive branch aloft — an allegorical reference to the Kultur- und Sportwoche event. The date '12.-24. AUGUST 1921' is inscribed at the top, while bold letterpress text at centre reads 'KULTUR u. SPORT-WOCHE HAMBURG'. The lower portion carries bilingual redemption text flanking a circular denomination cartouche reading '50 PF.', with the note annotated 'Ausgabe B' and bearing a manuscript signature of the Geschäftsführung; the printer's imprint 'COUTINHO u. MEYER HAMBURG' appears at the foot. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse is dominated by a large pictorial vignette of the ocean liner 'Hansa' viewed bow-on in Hamburg harbour, with the Hamburg city skyline visible to the right and a black-white-red German merchant ensign flying from the stern. The motto 'Seefahrt ist not!' is inscribed in Gothic script at the top within a wavy-rule border, and the lower margin carries the patriotic legend 'Deutschlands Handels-Flagge sei schwarz-weiss-rot!' in Gothic lettering. The denomination '50 Pf.' appears in circular cartouches at lower left and lower right, separated by a horizontal bar in the black-white-red national colours. |
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| Comments |
Hamburg's 1921 Kultur und Sportwoche — a combined cultural and sports festival — generated its own dedicated notgeld series, a practice that had become commercially shrewd by this point in the notgeld boom. Municipalities and towns across Weimar Germany recognized that collectors, not circulating workers, were the real market. Many such issues were printed in quantities far exceeding any plausible local need, redeemed almost immediately, and never genuinely spent.
Coutinho u. Meyer was a Hamburg-based commercial printer, not a security printing house — appropriate for a commemorative issue with no serious counterfeiting risk.