75 Pfennige

Bodenwerder issued this 75 Pfennige note in 1921 as part of the broader Notgeld wave that saw hundreds of German municipalities printing their own emergency scrip during the postwar currency chaos. The town holds an unusual place in German cultural history as the birthplace of Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Münchhausen, the historical figure whose wildly embellished war stories became the basis for the Baron Munchausen literary tradition — a detail local authorities were rarely shy about exploiting in their Notgeld designs.

The designer, Ge. Bodey, appears to have been a local commission rather than a professional illustrator hired by Selmar Bayer's Berlin print house. That division — local artistic conception, commercial urban execution — was common in small-town Notgeld and often produced compositionally awkward results.