50 Pfennig Plattdeutsche Volksgilde

The Plattdütsche Volksgill was a cultural society promoting Low German language and dialect traditions in Lübeck — not a bank, not a municipality, and not a public authority of any kind. That a private regional cultural organization was issuing its own emergency currency in 1921 speaks directly to how badly the Notgeld system had fractured any coherent notion of monetary issuance in Weimar Germany. Virtually any organized body with access to a local printer could, and did, put notes into circulation.

Mildenstein and Frommer signing this note as society officers rather than financial officials underlines how informal these instruments were — essentially community scrip dressed in the conventions of currency.