50 Pfennigs

Altenburg's notgeld was printed by the city's own playing card manufacturer — the Altenburger Spielkartenfabrik, whose roots trace to one of Germany's oldest playing card industries, with Altenburg having been a center of card production since at least the early nineteenth century. The firm had the color lithography equipment to produce municipal emergency currency when the postwar coin shortage made small denominations nearly impossible to circulate, and local authorities simply used what was at hand.

Two civic officials signed: Schilles as Oberbürgermeister and Schuhmacher as Bürgermeister — an unusual dual-mayoral structure reflecting Thuringian municipal practice of the period.