50 Pfennigs Bezirkssparkasse

Hofheim in Mainfranken is a small Franconian market town, and this cardboard Pfennig note belongs to the vast wave of municipal Notgeld issued across Germany between 1916 and 1922 as metal coinage disappeared from circulation entirely. The Bezirkssparkasse — a district savings institution, not a commercial bank — was a typical issuing authority for small-denomination emergency scrip at this level. Cardboard rather than paper signals either a late wartime issue or an early postwar one, when quality printing stock was genuinely difficult to source.

The square format is unusual enough to suggest intentional design rather than accident.