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50 Pfennig
| Issuer | Magistrat der Königlichen Haupt- und Residenzstadt Berlin |
|---|---|
| Year | 1918 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Plain cream-coloured ground bearing a large oval guilloche underprint in orange-ochre, at the centre of which the denomination numeral '50' appears within a green circle at top, with the legend 'Fünfzig Pfennige' in bold green Fraktur lettering across the middle. Below the guilloche, a four-line anti-counterfeiting warning in green Gothic script states the legal penalties for forgery or circulation of forged notes. |
| Reverse lettering | 50 Fünfzig Pfennige Wer Stadtkassenscheine nachmacht oder verfälscht, oder nachgemachte oder verfälschte Scheine sich verschafft und in Verkehr bringt, wird mit Zuchthaus nicht unter zwei Jahren bestraft |
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| Comments |
Berlin's municipal authority issued this note in 1918 under the Notgeld system, which allowed German cities and towns to produce their own emergency small-denomination currency as metal coinage disappeared from circulation — hoarded, melted, or diverted to wartime industrial use. By the final year of the war, the Reichsbank had effectively lost control of the fractional currency supply, and hundreds of municipalities stepped in to fill the gap.
Over twelve million printed for a single city in a single year tells you how acute the coin shortage had become. Berlin's municipal series was purely functional — no collector appeal was intended, unlike the decorative Notgeld that flooded the market from 1919 onward.