50 Pfennigs

Lauscha, a glassblowing town in the Thüringian highlands, issued this Notgeld during the acute coin shortage that followed Germany's defeat in the First World War. The municipality — then still technically within the dissolved duchy of Saxe-Meiningen — was printing its own emergency currency before the Weimar Republic had even formally consolidated authority over such matters. Small industrial communities like Lauscha often acted faster than larger administrative centers precisely because their workers were paid in small denominations and could not function without fractional currency.

Lauscha is the town credited with inventing the glass Christmas ornament in the 1840s. Whether the note's design acknowledged that local identity is noted elsewhere in this catalog.