During and after the First World War, money, especially small change, was in short supply. Paper and metal was being used in the war efforts and people's natural tendancy to hold onto something of value, (ie) coins and banknotes, furthered the shortage. Eventually to get over this problem, the state bank appears to have agreed to allow towns, villages and municipalities to issue their own money. These issues were emergency issues. The word not means emergency or necessity and geld means money.

('Notgeld'.....awaryjne pieniadze" i ich niemieckie wydania sa z lat 1914-1923. Wydawane byly glownie z powodu braku drobnych. Wiekszosc jest bardzo kolorowa i pieknie zaprojektowana. Kolekcjonerzy doceniaja ich rozmaitosc (serienscheine). Sa rozsadne w cenie, dlaczego wiec nie rozpoczac ich kolekcjonowania czy rozszerzyc dodatkowo kolekcji? Obecnie uzywam niemieckich nazw miast z ktorych pochodza, ale z czasem bede dodawal takze polskie nazwy miast.)

As time went on, more and more towns and villages jumped on the band wagon to print their own money, so that eventually, individual towns were able to produce notes that depicted their town's buildings or things that were important to their identity. If the town produced a commodity, eg) silk (Bielefeld), then the notes quite often depicted these manufacturing processes. In the above example, several of the Bielefeld notgeld issues were actually printed on silk and linen. Local 'heroes' could be depicted as could scenes from round and about. So many of these notgeld were so colourful, that it was inevitable that collectors would soon become interested in them. Apart from metal issues, notgeld was usually made of paper. Occasionally it was issued in the form of card, silk, linen, jute, chamois leather, leather, aluminium foil, velvet and by using such things as playing cards (spielkarton). At the beginning of the war, 1914, the notgeld issues were drab and bland, with many issues having been signed and counter signed by hand. Some early notes in my collection have 3 hand written signatures on them. In 1921, when the phenomenom was at it's height, thousands upon thousands of 'sets' were being produced. In 1923, notgeld became affected by the runaway inflation that had hit the German economy and so inflationary notgeld began to emerge. Notgeld was usually only valid in its own town, but notes were excepted in other places as well, especially at the time of the high inflation. Sometimes notes travelled through the whole German Reich (empire), more than 600 miles.

If a German banknote has the word Reichbanknote on it, then it has been issued by the state. This would be rather like an English banknote having been issued by the Bank of England. If it is a Reichbanknote then it is not a piece of notgeld (notes issued by towns and villages etc.etc.) Most notgeld will have the name of a town on it. Some will say something like this; Gutschein der Stadt.........Gutschein der Gemeinde......... Gutschein translates as 'voucher'.

I am sorry that I am unable to answer any emails which relate to either of the following..... Reichbanknotes and/or coins!