It's some kind of interest-bearing loan certificate. "Anheile" means "Loan". "Erneuerungschein für die Zinsscheine Reihe II" on the bottom-most certificate translates to "Renewal form for the coupons Series II" which were supposed to become available once this loan matured in 1932. "Reichsschuldenverwaltung" translates to "State Debt Office", which implies it was intended as a loan to help repay Germany's war debt from WWI.
The original loan certificate, which would presumably have looked something like
this, would have accompanied it and had a face value of 50,000 marks; the sections were intended to be detached and used to collect interest payments: 1000 marks a year for 10 years from 1922 to 1931.
It's not surprising that none of the interest certificates were redeemed. Germany was hit with severe hyperinflation later that year; 1000 marks and even 50,000 marks quickly became worthless. I'm afraid the person who originally bought this bond threw their money away when they loaned it to their government.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
Posted 09/11/2010 3:42 pm
