50 Pfennig Spar- und Darlehnskassenverein

This is Notgeld — emergency small-change scrip issued by a local savings and loan cooperative in Tichau, Upper Silesia, during the acute coin shortage that gripped Germany in the later war years. The cooperative form (eingetragene Genossenschaft mit unbeschränkter Haftpflicht) meant members carried unlimited liability, which gave these local issues at least nominal backing beyond pure faith in the printer.

Upper Silesia's postwar fate — contested between Germany and Poland, eventually partitioned in 1922 following the 1921 plebiscite — means that Tichau itself became Tychy, now a mid-sized Polish city. Most of the institutional records behind issues like this one simply did not survive the transition.