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75 Pfennig Café Monopol
| Issuer | City of Osnabrück (notgeld) (Prussian province of Hanover) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1921 |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | Central vignette shows a skeleton seated at a bar counter, with a bottle labeled "Cognac", two glasses, and a knocked-over bottle in a dark satirical composition typical of Weimar-era Notgeld. The design employs bold illustrative linework with a humorous, macabre character. Verse lettering is arranged in a text block below the vignette. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Central vignette illustrates the interior of a distillery (Brennerei), with stills, boilers, and related apparatus arranged throughout the scene. Several figures are present, some operating the equipment, others gathered at a table, rendered in a bold illustrative style consistent with Weimar-era Notgeld graphic art. A text verse occupies the lower portion of the note. |
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| Comments |
Osnabrück's 1921 notgeld series is among the more self-consciously decorative issues of the Weimar inflation period, when German municipalities routinely contracted local printers and artists to produce collectible small-denomination emergency currency. The Café Monopol piece is a merchant-tied note — issued by or in association with a specific commercial establishment rather than as pure civic scrip — a subset of notgeld that was frequently produced as much for the collector trade as for genuine transactional use.
By 1921 the secondary market for German notgeld was substantial enough that many issues never meaningfully circulated at all.