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50 Pfennig pink issue
| Issuer | Gemeinde Schmiedefeld (Municipality of Schmiedefeld am Rennsteig) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1921 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | The upper half of the note carries a dark-ground vignette crowded with laboratory glassware — flasks, graduated cylinders, a burette labelled 'Salzsä[ure]', and precision thermometers — alluding to the local glass and chemical industry, flanking a central wreath enclosing a cockerel perched on grain sacks with the circular legend 'Gemeinde Schmiedefeld'. Below, bold black Fraktur lettering on a pink guilloche underprint reads 'Notgeld der Gemeinde Schmiedefeld' with the subtitle 'Glasindustrie- u. Luftkurort 720 m.ü.d.M.'; the denomination 'Fünfzig Pfennig' appears in decorative cartouches at lower left and right, with a manuscript facsimile signature above the designation 'Gemeindevorstand' in the central panel. |
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| Reverse description | The reverse is dominated by a large scenic vignette in black letterpress on a pink underprint, illustrating forestry workers felling and sawing timber amid a Thuringian woodland landscape, captioned 'Forstwirtschaft i. Schmiedefeld'; a decorative oak-leaf and bead arch frames the upper scene. The denomination '50' appears in a bold black square at upper left and 'Pfg' at upper right. A two-line verse in Fraktur script fills the lower panel across the full width of the note. |
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| Comments |
Schmiedefeld am Rennsteig is a small Thuringian village on the watershed ridge of the Rennsteig, historically the boundary between Franconia and Thuringia. This note belongs to the vast wave of municipal Notgeld that flooded Germany between 1920 and 1922, when coin shortages and rampant inflation made small-denomination federal currency functionally useless at the local level. Thousands of German municipalities printed their own — Schmiedefeld among them.
The pink color variant is the key collecting distinction here. Some Schmiedefeld 50 Pfennig issues appeared in different color printings, likely reflecting separate print runs rather than any change in authorization or validity period. Whether the color difference was intentional design or simply a change in available ink stock is not documented.