50 Pfennigs

Esslingen's Notgeld issues came out of the same wartime necessity that pushed hundreds of German municipalities into emergency currency production after 1914 — Reichsbank coin shortages forced local authorities to fill the gap themselves. The J. F. Schreiber firm was a natural choice here: already established in Esslingen as a printer and publisher of educational materials, they were printing on their own doorstep rather than shipping work to a distant trade house.

The watermarked paper is worth noting. Many municipal Notgeld issues of this period skipped security features entirely, treating the notes as purely functional stopgaps. A watermark suggests at least some concern about local counterfeiting — or a printer with access to better stock than most.