50 Pfennigs

Marburg's municipal authority issued this note under the emergency currency (Notgeld) provisions that spread across German towns from 1916 onward, as the imperial government's wartime coin requisitions stripped small denominations from everyday commerce. C. Naumann's Druckerei in Frankfurt handled enormous volumes of Notgeld work during this period — a commercial printer pressed into quasi-monetary production, which explains the guilloche underprint as a nod toward security without the infrastructure of a proper currency printer.

The dual-signature requirement — Troje and Estor — reflects municipal accountability structures that local governments maintained even under wartime strain. Marburg notes from 1917 are moderately common but wear heavily; they circulated hard through a university town with an active daily economy.