50 Pfennigs Böttger Series

Schleiz issued this 50 Pfennig note as part of a locally commissioned Notgeld series commemorating Johann Friedrich Böttger, the Saxon alchemist who stumbled onto the formula for European hard-paste porcelain in 1708 while imprisoned at the Albrechtsburg in Meissen. Schleiz's connection to Böttger is biographical — he was born there in 1682 — which gave the city reasonable claim to the theme even as Meissen and Dresden dominated his later story.

The 1921 date places this firmly in the second wave of German municipal emergency currency, when many towns used Notgeld more as a collectibles revenue stream than a genuine response to coin shortages. Böttger died an alcoholic at 37, never freed from royal service despite his discovery.