50 Pfennig Mewe

Mewe — today Gniew, in northern Poland — was a small town on the Vistula whose wartime Notgeld issues reflect the acute small-change crisis that gripped German municipalities from 1917 onward. The Reichsbank's metal coinage had long been hoarded or melted, forcing local magistrates to print emergency fractional denominations themselves. This 50 Pfennig piece is among the more modest productions: cardboard rather than proper banknote stock, authenticated only by an official municipal stamp rather than any engraved security printing.

The DeNG 6 reference suffix "b" indicates a variant within the M35.8 type — likely a difference in stamp color, ink, or paper batch, distinctions that matter more to specialist Notgeld collectors than the notes ever mattered to the townspeople spending them on bread.