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50 Pfennigs
| Issuer | Stadt Bodenwerder (City of Bodenwerder), Prussian Province of Hanover |
|---|---|
| Year | 1920 |
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| Currency | Mark (1914-1924) |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Stadt Bodenwerder a.W. Gut für Fünfzig Pfennig Dieser Gutschein wird von uns bis 31. Dezbr. 1922 eingelöst Bodenwerder a.d.W. den 1. Novbr. 1920 Nº Die Stadtsparkasse |
| Reverse description | Tripartite composition in black and ochre. Central rectangular vignette on an ochre ground shows Baron Münchhausen pulling himself and his horse from a swamp by his own pigtail. Flanking panels carry the ornate scrollwork arms of Bodenwerder (left) and a second heraldic shield (right); header inscriptions note "Anno 1287", "Hieronymus v. Münchhausen Abenteuer" and "1720–1920"; lower band bears a four-line verse and the denomination numeral "50" in ochre at each corner. |
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| Comments |
Bodenwerder is best known as the birthplace of Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Münchhausen, the 18th-century cavalry officer whose wildly embellished war stories became the basis for the literary Baron Munchausen character. The town has traded on that association ever since, and this Notgeld issue is no exception — small municipal emergency currency of this period routinely incorporated local identity as a deliberate design strategy, partly to encourage hoarding over circulation, which kept redemption costs down.
Selmar Bayer was one of several Berlin printers who handled the enormous volume of German municipal Notgeld orders between 1919 and 1922. The 1920 inflation wave had not yet reached its catastrophic peak, but coin shortages were already severe enough to push towns like Bodenwerder into issuing their own fractional paper.