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I’m going to add this here in case I forget it:
https://www.das-deutsche-notgeld.de/pm3/pmvisi.htm
site that lists various unusual notgeld. My favorites there are on that page…
I might add an extra section in the article for other spelt out names eg) L U TH E R on the Erfurt notes.
R U D O L S T A D T
I have started an article with the places mentioned so far. I will post on the website in a few days when we have hopefully had a few more suggested…….
Hi Charles, the Stonehenge-like construction on the obverse of the Artern Bergwart note is the logo of Ewald Ludwig Eberhardt’s publishing company, Bergwart in Artern (issuer of the notes). You can see it on the firm’s books published throughout the 1920s (see attached picture), all of them (as far as I can make out) actually written by Engelhardt himself. As a local history enthusiast and esoteric thinker, he seems to be referencing the theory that there was once a prehistoric temple to Woden (Odin) on the local mountain, on or near the site of the later castle of Kyffhausen. This is on account of the mountain upon which the castle is sited being referred to in a document of the nearby monastery of Walkenried, dated 1277, as the Wotansberg : Woden’s Mountain. Engelhardt imagines it as a kind of sun temple using a circle of henge megaliths, centred on a cultic statue or totem, similar to the legendary Irminsul.
Hi Gary, danke für das Kompliment, as they say. I’m fortunate that in my younger days I had the pleasure of working in Germany and studying Germanistik in London and Mainz, and have kept up a lifelong habit of studying German. As far as dialects go, I find some more accessible than others, and if it’s one I’m unfaniliar with, a rule of thumb is that the vowel sounds vary more than consonant sounds, and where consonants vary there’s often a perceptible pattern. Sometimes actual dialect words and expressions are simply unguessable and need a lot of dictionary work! Having spent little time in the north of Germany, I find the notes in various forms of Low German a real challenge …
Thanks! I have added it to the ‘Intro’ tab on the main website. (I can’t seem to turn off the automatic ‘watermark’ for that image).
I read a post about Oldisleben just a few days ago, which I cannot fid it anymore. It was about the town-name being spelled-out on the notes.
I just ordered this one:
Here is a (surely incomplete) list of other examples:
Aschersleben, Oldisleben, Preetz, Rees, Zerbst, Nörenberg.
Anybody who knows more examples, please add to the list!
thx, Ch
Charles!
I have that exact chart somewhere – photocopied and stuck in some calligraphy or typography book! I have some examples of ligatures I’ll have to see if I can find, but that may take me a few weeks due to work.
Please allow me to add to this the following:
I you’re interested in the money of former-Silesia, focussing on the products of Flemming-Wiskott, Glogau and J. Himmer – Augsburg will survey at least 80% of all notgeld issued there! The Koch-note is a rare exception! The Himmer-notes are rather boring, all looking the same, and more pten than not expensie!
Ch.
Hi Gary
this note is filled to the brim with, I guess, dialect from either Lower-Saxony or Westphalia,
Referring to the upper-left-corner, and on the vague pics this is kind of hard to read, it says: Bärchword & Odärn, meaning Barchwort and Artern.
The coat-of-arms on the other side in the centre is the blason of the Kyffhäuser Region (just south of the Harz-Mountains, ask TGM if I know!), and the Counts of Mansfeld. The smaller shields probably refer to the 4 depicted (young?) ladies, but I couldn’t find any sensible info so far. Also no info on the abbreviation A G Z M on the shield in the lower-middle.
I think also the Stonehenge-like structure is worthy of investigation.
If you find any info yourself, please let us know!
rgds, Ch.
Hi John,
thanks in return for your enlightening post: Mr. Hablik reminds me of our Gerrit Rietveld, famous as carpenter, designer and architect.
Almost automatically Herbert Bayer of Bauhaus -fame comes to mind.
 Here’s a sample.I also thank Tony for his Steinburg upload!
Rgds, Charles
I just noticed that under ‘Odaern‘ in Gr/Mehl, they have a note about Artern. That’s pretty helpful for collectors knowing which notes they refer to……that that we definitely know!
I’m overwhelmed. You certainly are a Guru. I had a hard time translating that stuff with my childhood German. And a dialect, no less. Fantastic.
Thank you for both the clue to the town and the translations. How did you manage to read the dialect? I can manage some of it, but nowhere as well as you.
Hi Graham – you are right.
These are private verkehrsausgaben notgeld issues, generally grouped under the heading ‘baekerpfennige’. The catalogue that lists these types is Tieste’s Verk. Band 2 (M – Z). It doesn’t state what kind of shop (usually baker shops), ‘S. Jahn’ had, so we just don’t know. Some were colonial wares shops, some book shops, some guest houses……but the majority were bakeries of some description…..we have bakers, master bakers etc. All can be seen as small retail outlets or shops. These types catalogue on average around 7 euros each…….with these 3 being 6 euros each. You do get scarcer pieces though, so the prices for those types go much higher. I really do see these types as ‘proper’ notgeld issues, made so that the customers got some small change back………and that the shop-keeper knew could only then be subsequently spent in his shop!
About the smallest notgeld notes – that notes is from Muenchen (Munich) and on the Notgeld Category is Verkehrsausgaben, but I think the issues of date in 1920?
John – that would be brilliant. I could make an article or menu item for it, so everyone can use it.
I was thinking of Gary’s comment about how hard the typefaces are to read. Some of this is due to the print quality, but also these Fraktur typefaces are ornamented to the point of abstraction. If people are interested I could compile a quick key to the characters and maybe some pointers to identify easily similar letters. I’ve had to deal with Fraktur in type design and doing research from German sources so it’s something I’m familiar with. – Hope everyone is well!
Hi Charles, I love the Itzehoe notes! They are, as you say, so very modern, and I was inspired to see if Hablik had designed any others. I actually found a couple in my collection! He designed the 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 and 50 Mark notes (Geiger, 508.01-06) for the district of Steinburg (in which his expatriate home town of Itzehoe was located) and they also show his flair – he in fact trained as a cabinetmaker and practised all kinds of architectural and interior design, but is best known for his work as an artist and graphic designer. I think the playfulness and verve of his Itzehoe and Steinburg Notgeld designs, even down to the lettering, reflect his maxim : “Your ideas should be as irresponsibly free as a birdâ€. Thanks for making me look at these with a new eye!
Hi John, the organisation of my collection has grown organically with its size until it reached it current state. My albums run chronologically from c. 1900-2002, with sections given over to Verkehrsausgaben, Serienscheine, Hyperinflation etc. The largest section, the Serienscheine, is subdivided by German states, with Prussia further subdivided into provinces and Thuringia into its constituent predecessors. I use both Grabowski / Mehl and Lindmann and otherwise note the place of issue and issuer; further research, notes and appropriate related ephemera accompany the pieces themselves in the albums. Here’s an example :
What is your smallest piece of notgeld? Here are mine – anyone hazard a guess as to where they are from, date of issue and what notgeld category they are from?
I have just published the ‘Artern’ info as an article: https://notgeld.com/gncc-notgeld-articles/artern/
Thanks for your kind words Chuck. Please do keep making posts and reading all the notgeld info.
A collection of 1500 different is pretty good going, so keep adding notes and your collection will get better and better. 😉
Wow! Yes indeed it does John. I think I will create an article on the website so all this wonderful info is not lost. I think I need a new forum title for you ‘ forum guru’
Info like this will keep the forum alive
Hi Tony,
the verses, composed by the publisher Ewald Ludwig Engelhardt whose company Berghart in Artern isssued the notes, translates as :
Although as a human all alone you remain a link in a long chain, /Â Oh, a leaf blown in the wind and the wind but a mere breath, a mere single note of a song, / But a grain of sand in the desert, but a cell of a feather already light, /Â In the sea of the all-encompassing God but a drop on a dancing wave,
Yet curse yourself not, for you are no fleeting meaningless moment. / Nor a plaything left forgotten in a rotted wooden chest, / O, ‘tis a whole world you experience in the turning of the spheres, / A melody plucked on a string whether loud or mute. / The Preserver of All weeps within you and laughs, / Do great and manifold things, you creative power!
Herr Engelhardt’s thing was local history and sagas, and he published a few books on these topics, but he was also a bit of a poet and writer and philosopher on the side, though a fairly esoteric one.
The A. G. Z. M is, I think, carved on a capstone dated 1542 (0r 1547 or 1549) and probably stands for Albrecht Graf zu Mansfeld, or : Albrecht, Count of Mansfeld. The coat of arms is the same as that in the old thaler coin in the centre of the note, namely that of the counts of Mansfeld, and Albrecht VII was count of Mansfeld until his death in 1560.
The whole note is a smorgasbord of local history, but I still haven’t worked out who the children depicted in the silhouettes are (working on it). Hope this helps!
Hi Gary, it’s not easy to find but the town of issue, and indeed the issuer, is on the note, albeit in Saxon dialect. The issuer is Ewald Ludwig Engelhardt’s publishing company “Bergwart in Artern”, or as it says on the obverse (in the boxes top left and right) : “Bärchword en Odärn”. Being completely honest, I used the catalogue to identify the note and then worked backwards from there!
Hello everyone. This is my first post. I love this website. The information contained in it is invaluable. There are very few places you can get information about Notgeld. I have well over 1000 Serienscheine notes and over 500 Verkehrsausgaben notes in my modest collection. I am fascinated by German history during that time period. I use the Grabowski/Mehl books to identify and catalog my notes
I had to use the catalogue for this one. There are a couple of pieces that I don’t think you would ever guess without it being pictured. The printer of this note doesn’t even help as its ‘Leipzig’! Does anyone know who the ‘children are?
Gary – what does the rhyme say please, as your German is a whole lot better than mine at ‘0’!!……roughly will do of course if it is a bad script or local dialect.
I never even noticed the square shield in the bottom of the obverse with almost my initials ‘A G 2 M’ or ‘A G Z M’…….anyone know??
A big part of the labor involved in collecting is sorting the Notgeld. Some of those German Kurrent scripts are horrendously difficult to make out. To make matters worse, some of the towns and cities were quite cryptic in how they design they money. A number of times I had to go page by page through the Mehl catalog to find the applicable town.
A good example is this Notgeld from Artern which doesn’t mention Artern on it. On the top, on the reverse side, it seems to indicate that it’s from a town on the Oder River. Artern is nowhere near there.
So…other than asking our excellent webmaster, how do you collectors do it? How did you identify this or similar pieces?
This is the very rare 50m note from Rothenburg, depicting Luther. The note is from a set of 4, so we are trying to get the picture of the other 3 if anyone can help………
All GNCC members : That goes for any of my articles with lists please. Always let me know of any additions you have and I will add them in.
Hi Charles – On my homepage right at the bottom, you can see the ‘Luther’ article with all the pieces we are currently aware of. Any further notes any member becomes aware of, please please please inform us
Hi John Adams!
For starters: this is the very 1st time in my whole life that I participate in a forum, so I hope I’ll get everything right, so not having the uploads landing on Mars and such,,,,
Like you, I have lots of “favourites”, but one of them really got me enthusiastic, and that is Wenzel Hablik’s Itzehoe-series. It still gives me the feeling this guy was 100 years ahead of his time! This thing might have been published just 20 years ago! Although it’s different of course from an art-historical point of view!
I will now try to upload an image, and as I said: I hope it won’t end up on Mars !
Regards, Charles
Thanks for posting in the forum Dan. In the Luther article, I will try and find more info for you on the latest note I added that you questioned me about. I’ll try and add a picture here later to…
Hi Daniel Gerken,
Do you know the nice Luther-notes from Erfurt, by the noted artist Alfred Hanf? And the series from Eisenach and Halle / Saale? There are lots of series about Luther, as well as stamps and postcards, to enhance your collection!
I wish you much success with building-up your collection,
Charles
As a retired Lutheran minister, I collect notgeld that features Martin Luther, or the places he is associated with. Before I found Tony’s website, it was rather hit or miss in finding information and items for my collection. Tony has helped a lot in my search, as well as providing translations for many of the notes. Since being a member of GNCC, I have enjoyed the articles on the wide variety of notgeld available, as well as their history.
When I used to log my collection I had a spreadsheet with different tabs for the different notgeld categories……..so a tab for serienscheine and another for verkehrsausgaben and another for prisoner-of-war etc etc.
I had columns for Catalogue number: Place of issue: Date of notes: Face values: Number of pieces in set/complete: cat.value. Similar to image below. I would always now, add in a couple of extra columns for ‘comments’ & points of interest or things to be aware of…….
When I started mine, Lindman (Lm.) was the only catalogue available…..but nowadays you have Gr/Mehl (Grabowski/Mehl). For serienscheine you have to decide which catalogue you are going to use I guess. It also depends on how exact the record you are making needs to be. It is just a basic reference or is it ‘everything about a note/set?’. Variants aren’t listed at all well in Gr/Mehl.
I just started collecting Notgeld (I’m a stamp collector) and was wondering how people preferred to organize their collections. I use a lot of the books and sleeves by Leuchtturm/Lighthouse so I have a good sense of how to store the notes. However, I started to make a spreadsheet to catalog the notes I have and was trying to think of the different fields. Anyone have advice or thoughts to share? Thanks!
I have added a new category to the shop for ‘German / Polish’ notgeld. Whilst updating some products, I noticed this interesting piece from Koenigshuette:
The obverse is in German, whilst the reverse is in Polish. German = Koenigshuette : Polish = Krolewska Huta. The date of the German/Polish plebiscite (People’s vote or referendum / volksabstimmung) can be seen on the note – ‘20.3.1921’.
They are private verkehrsausgaben notgeld, issued by the Duren ‘Konsum- und Sparverein’ (Co-op and savings association). There are 7 different face values and they all catalogue at 15 euros each. Several variants exist where the font of the face value (WZ) is slightly different.
I attach a scan of the 3 pieces in my shop for other collectors to see.
I have all but the Konsum und Sparverein coupons. I’ve seen them offered from time to time, but for whatever reason, they’ve just never appealed to me…probably because I know so little about them.
Graham – I hope my notgeld website and GNCC are good resources for you…… and anyone who is really passionate about the subject. I think that because notgeld are such a specific area of the more general ‘banknote collecting’ sphere, there just had to be a very specialised website for it all!!
Hi Mike! – Dueren issued notgeld from these 5 different categories, according to Monika Pick’s ‘notgeld-mufti’:
Kleingeld (1916-1921), Serienscheine, Grossgeld, Inflationsgeld 1922 & Inflationsgeld 1923.
So you won’t find any 1914 notgeld issues from Dueren or any wertbestaendige issues either. Hope that helps?
Thanks for giving me the Green note
Interesting on your first notgeld note, on my first notgeld notes is a pack of 20 different from my father’s friend about 25 years ago for £5 but I put in the tin and forgotten all about it till last year on the first lockdown, I was sorting things out and found it, buy a few more from ebay and to put on one side for a while till I found this GNCC
I just wanted to drop in quickly and say “HI!” My notgeld collecting has unfortunately taken a back seat to a full time job AND starting a new business, so I likely won’t be a frequent visitor for a while.
When I am active, my collecting is limited to notes (and coins) from Stadt Duren. Once I complete that collection (I’m getting close) I’ll start expanding. I think I will move on to another town, or possibly region. Or maybe just go after it all!
If anyone has any Duren gems they’d like to part with, I’d be glad to take a look!
This was the first ever German notgeld I collected. I thought it looked like some kind of matchbox label because of its size. Whenever I come across it at flea markets or sales, it always takes me back to a time when I was a young boy, just 10 years old!!
Jack – super. No rush whatsoever. Hopefully as we get more people joining in, the more notgeld info will flow. Hope you liked the avatar I chose for you – a Weimar banknote designed by Herbert Bayer from the famous Bauhaus.
Initial greeting post. I hope to contribute more once i have finished setting my attempt to sell Roman coins. I hope to have that operational later this month and return to studying notgeld for fun.
Jack
Graham – I have a green note sitting here for you (free) of course! Here are the set of 4 from a picture in my folders:
On the fronts, 3 notes are dated 1919, with only the red one having a date of 1917.
These are very interesting notes Graham. There is a green one and a yellow one that go with these 2 – do you have those? otherwise, I will see if I have any spare ones here for you….
There is an article about these notes somewhere on the notgeld.com website, with translations, as they have interesting info on them, especially the names on the fronts. ‘Hanke‘ (bottom right) is probably the most important one as he was the Director of the Bielefeld Stadtsparkasse (Town Savings Bank)…..that issued all the silk, linen and velvet notgeld!!
And this one is different, the date show 1.4.1919 but at the back still show 1.7.(1917)
Wow, thanks for showing the notgeld notes of Pakosch and I would have miss to spot the difference and the missing serial numbers too, thanks for the tip 😃😃
Hi John, wow 206 albums in your collection and now I’m getting on my 2nd albums soon 😃😃
Oh wow. So much is different. Looks like the paper type has the changed, the kerning of “Gutschein.” is tighter on the lower note, the 25 on the right side is a different font, the borders are even slightly different.
All notgeld collectors should be aware to check what you think are ‘duplicates’ – they might not be! There are very small differences is several notes that a collector will love. Here is a good example. What differences can you spot?
Hi Graham, welcome to a fascinating hobby! Not sure how many notes I have exactly, but I’ve currently got 206 albums holding about 60 notes each at a guesstimated average (most albums have 15 pages or so of between 3 and 6 notes each, so say on average 4 per page), which makes it probably just over 12,000 notes. The more and more I’ve accumulated, the more I’ve had to reorganise the collection so that I can actually locate notes and sets; it’s this organising and the research enabling it that has been such a large part of the pleasure of collecting! My wife says it keeps me indoors and keeps me out of trouble. She not (ever) wrong – whoever heard of a Notgeld-collecting hooligan?
Hopefully we can all help you with your notgeld interests and collection and also suggest pieces or sets that you might like.
Just started collecting and found a pack of 100 from a coin shop on eBay. It was a nice way to survey the field and figure out where I want to go in collecting. Since I teach a physics class I’ve been surprised to find notgeld illustrating optics – especially in towns like Jena and Wetzlar which are the homes of Zeiss and Leitz. I also enjoy a lot of German poetry and literature. I’m pretty amazed how these are such a great historical record! – Gordon
The black lines making up the background to the place where the serial numbers would usually be are called ‘raster’. In the catalogues you might see for example…….’KN-Raster mit 7 linien’ or ‘KN-raster mit 13 linien’………so now you know it refers to that shaded area where the serial number goes. Hope the forum info is helping?
Graham – here is another one for you to see. Notice that these pieces are all missing their serial numbers, where the usual pieces all have a serial number.
Be aware that some notgeld pieces don’t have serial numbers at all though…
Fantastic info John, as usual. Thanks for your post. I have updated and included your forum post in the Deutscher Michel article!
https://notgeld.com/gncc-notgeld-articles/deutscher-michael/
On the note Kahla G/M 668.10.3, Deutscher Michel is sweeping away the discarded values of a society which has lost its way. Alongside an old spring and a broken cup and what may be an old shoe with its sole hanging off, we see a bible and various commandments, quotations and proverbs concerning righteous living : “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20 : 13); “Thou shalt not commit adultery” (Exodus 20 : 14); “Thou shalt not steal” (Exodus 20 : 15);  “Love your neighbour as yourself” (the Great Commandment from Matthew 22 : 39); “Pray and work” ( St Benedict of Nursia’s Rule : Ora et labora); “Do what is right and fear no one” (Latin proverb : Recte fac, neminem time); “Be as one! As one! As one!” (Attinghausen in Friedrich Schiller’s drama Wilhelm Tell, Act 4, Scene 2); “Honesty is the best policy” (English equivalent to the German proverb,which literally says : “Honesty lasts longest”); and “Always practise faithfulness and decency” (from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, with lyrics based on a poem by Ludwig Hoelty, this was a very popular piece of music in Prussia – the melody rang out from the carillion of Potsdam’s Garrison Church from 1797 to 1945).
On the Kahla note I showed : I’m not sure what the papers are that he is brushing up though. I always thought it was the notgeld issues themselves?? Anyone confirm or otherwise??
We all had to start at ‘only a few’ at some point…….
Thanks for your 1st post! Hopefully we can see if we can build up some interaction between the GNCC members.
Before I started to sell my notgeld collection off, I had amassed 20,000 different. The most important thing to me though was everything I learnt along the way.
Hi everyone
How many Notgeld Notes do you have in your collection?
I’ve 104 and growing in my collection but before I join this GNCC……I have only about 30
In the set of 6, I would say I like this one the best. Just noticed after uploading the picture, that its one to add to the Deutscher Michel article!:
Here’s an upload of Kahla G/M 668.10.5 Einigkeit macht stark : “Unity makes for strength”.  The more I look at the guy in the corner, the more I can see Munch’s “The Scream” – except that here the screaming figure isn’t clutching his own head, he’s being grasped by the ears by an opponent. It’s a splendid trompe l’oeil.The figure on the left is Deutscher Michel, the personification of the German People. He is almost always shown, wearing his nightcap. At the time of these notes, the German people were struggling with food shortages and economic collapse.
Here are my favourite 2 pieces of German notgeld. They were some of the earliest pieces I stumbled upon and collected. Due to their very colourful and artistic graphics, I was then hooked on collecting notgeld………..and still am, nearly 50 years on from then!
Just seen a couple of possible fixes and sent that info to Edge.
(I’ll remove all these posts when and if we sort this out.)It would be nice to get an upload from your own computer option though…….like normal, so you can just select the picture you want to upload to the forum.
I just used the ‘IMG’ button to upload this picture. I had to copy the link still though…….
Slight issue – you have to give access to the people to see your album / photo. I have done that for you John.
If you click on the link in my forum post, do you get to see the picture.
Kunal – I take it you can’t see anything if you click on the link in my forum post??Its a bit of mucking about………..
Edge is looking for a plug in image uploaded we can use hopefully. Not sure what the ‘IMG’ button actually does then here?
I’ll keep playing……………That seemed to do it! I just copied the link from the top part of the page when I had opened the photo.
What does ‘Einigkeit macht stark’ mean John?
I’ll try and add a link from Google photos of the picture I just uploaded there…….
Just a general question to all in the forum as a test and taster – what’s your favourite piece of Notgeld in your collection, and why?
I have so many favourites, but one I keep returning to is Note 5 (“Einigkeit macht stark”) of the Kahla Political Series (Grabowski Mehl 668.10 / 668.11, Lindmann 650i). Drawn by the Norwegian artist Olaf Gulbransson who was a mainstay of the Munich satirical magazine Simplicissimus, it shows such a delightfully chaotic free-for-all between the various classes of German society. A pleasing little detail in the bottom left-hand corner is what appears to be a nod to fellow Norwegian Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”.If you have private verkehrsausgaben notgeld and want to know their catalohue value and don’t have the quite expensive Tieste pair of catalogues……..please just ask!
These pieces were issued by the ‘H. Heye’ glass factory so are known as ‘private’ issues. (Pieces issued by private companies). You will therefore NOT find them in the Gr/Mehl catalogues unfortunately. They are however, listed by the much better and fully comprehensive Tieste verk. catalogue(s). They catalogue at 10 euros each and a full set consists of 6 pieces (as shown above).
Here are the pictures of the ‘Delion’ signed ones:
Here are the pictures of the ‘Tiemer’ signed ones:
What has been your newest notgeld piece of information you have learnt?
I learnt that the private verkehrsausgaben notes from Schauenstein have 2 different signatures to look out for :
‘Tiemer’ & ‘Delion’
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