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50 Pfennigs
| Issuer | Xanten, City of |
|---|---|
| Year | 1921 |
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| Printer | J. Adolf Schwarz, Lindenberg, Germany |
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| Obverse description | Central vignette presents a woodcut-style engraving of the Xanten Cathedral (St. Viktor Dom) with its twin blue spires rising against a billowing cloud-filled sky, flanked on the left by a medallion portrait of Saint Viktor in armour bearing a blue cross on a heraldic shield with the denomination FÜNFZIG below, and on the right by Saint Helena with a heraldic shield and the word PFENNIG. The title legend in Gothic blackletter script reads Domschein der Siegfriedstadt Xanten across the top banner, with a secondary inscription commemorating the refounding of the cathedral association, and validity text citing 1 Oktober 1921 and Der Dompfarrer at the foot of the central panel. The printer's imprint of J. A. Schwarz, Lindenberg Allgäu appears in the lower margin. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Central octagonal vignette in a woodcut-engraving style illustrates a dramatic scene from the Nibelungenlied, with two heroic figures grappling over a mound of treasure, a raven in flight above, and runic-style weapon motifs scattered throughout; the legend NIBELUNGENSCHATZ is inscribed beneath the vignette within an ornamental gilt border. The denomination numeral 50 appears in red within framed cartouches at upper left and upper right. Flanking side panels in blue-grey tones present mythological aquatic scenes: a coiled sea serpent amid rocky cliffs to the left and mermaids with a Viking longship to the right, reinforcing the Siegfried and Rhine legend theme. |
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| Comments |
Xanten's 1921 Notgeld issue belongs to the second wave of German municipal emergency money, by which point local administrations had largely abandoned the crude wartime scrip in favor of deliberately collectible designs. Xanten, sitting on the Rhine in what had been a Roman colonial capital — Colonia Ulpia Traiana — leaned predictably into that antiquity. The city's issues were printed by J. Adolf Schwarz of Lindenberg, a Bavarian firm that handled Notgeld contracts for numerous small issuers across southern and western Germany during this period.
Schwarz's operation was one of several regional printers that expanded aggressively into the Notgeld trade between 1920 and 1922, when collector demand briefly made small-denomination scrip a genuine revenue source for issuing municipalities.