Hamburg notgeld issues represent some excellent pieces, both 'common' and 'rare'. A notgeld catalogue is available that covers all these issues. It is based on an area of issue rather than type...so there are verkehrsausgaben, serienscheine, inflation etc..notes in this catalogue.
Some extremely scarce Hamburg issues can be seen in the following scan. They catalogue as Lm.517 & Lm.536. (It shows the front and the back of the notes).
The story of Klaus Stoertebeker which features on 2 of the notes is as follows: He was a pirate in the late 1300s (that's a fact) and then the myths start - here's the most popular one: He and his crew were captured and brought to Hamburg and sentenced to death by beheading. On his execution he - it is rumoured - asked to be beheaded standing upright, facing his pirate crew. After his head was chopped off, as many of his crew as he was walking past would be spared the same fate. According to the story, he walked past 12 of his men after he got beheaded, and only stopped walking because he was tripped up by the executioner. All the crew were executed, however (that's another fact).
How much of the myth is real, I suppose is for everyone to judge for themselves!
Hans Hummel was a water carrier back in the early 1800s and the story is told that kids would call him 'Hummel' to annoy him (his real name wasn't Hans Hummel but Johann Wilhelm Bentz). Rumour has it that he was a really grumpy man and being called Hummel annoyed him but because he was carrying the heavy load of water he could never rush over to those naughty kids and so instead all he could do was shout at them. 'Mors Mors'. There's a German language spoken in Lower Saxony, called 'Plattdeutsch' - and Mors is the word for 'arse' in Plattdeutsch. And 'Mors mors' would be an abbreviated version of 'Klei mi am Mors' - which, in 'Hochdeutsch' would be 'Leck mich am Arsch' (that translates to: 'Lick my arse!' but I suppose you'd say 'kiss my arse' in colloquial English)......and to this day, many people use 'Hummel Hummel' as a greeting (especially where tourists are involved) and the answer is always 'Mors Mors'.
The following scan shows a further 2 scarce notgeld, issued in Hamburg. Note the very low serial number (usually suggesting a low issue of notes, so scarcity is probably high) and on the other note, the unusual face value of 30pf and that it was issued by a restaurant!
The following 4 notes are from 2 similar sets, one with a white border and one with a brown. One set is scarcer than the other!
The following scan shows 2 notes, an overprint from Willy Petersen and another scarce Hamburg issue.
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