50 Pfennigs

Altenburg's 50 Pfennig Notgeld was printed by the Altenburger Spielkartenfabrik — a playing card manufacturer, not a security printer. The firm had the lithographic equipment and the local contract, and the results reflect that origin: technically competent colour work from a civilian trade press, issued under the twin signatures of both the Oberbürgermeister and Bürgermeister, an unusual dual-authority countersigning arrangement that reflects how seriously some municipalities treated even small-denomination emergency scrip.

Altenburg had been the centre of German playing card production since the early nineteenth century, and the Spielkartenfabrik's involvement in the 1921 Notgeld wave was entirely practical — the presses were already there.