Help With Notgeld Cities

H Peter,

Thanks for that link. I knew about that possibility - it's just that it didn;t apprear in the reference book (more of a check list really) - so perhaps the book is in error in that instance. I have a better pair of reference books on their way (I have about 2,000 of these notes, which is really quite a small collection) so that will keep me happily occupied for a while.

Those other notes I find tricky to nail down, but again maybe it's just an omission in my current references

thanks again
MAlcolm

German isn't my native tongue, but I did five years of it in high school. Not that it helped much...

#1: Altenau/Harz, Hannover, now in Niedersachsen state; the link given by Peter is correct (the coat of arms matches). It is listed in Coffing, p.82

#2: This one's tricky. The Brocken is a mountain in Sachsen-Anhalt, a famed haunt of witches and evil spirits (hence the "Witches fly to the Brocken" motif on the front and the devil Mephistopheles on the back). In the 1920's, there was a hotel on the summit, served by a railway (the Brockenbahn). I assume this was made for sale to and for the use of tourists there. As for which town it belongs under, I believe Schierke is the nearest, though this would be "private paper". Coffing p.196

#3: "Dom" is cathedral, "Bau" is building and "Stein" is stone; "Dombaustein" are therefore stones from a cathedral building, not the name of a place. "Domausschuss" is "cathedral committee". Which Cathedral? The name of the city is next to the date: Xanten. Coffing p.222, private paper. I've got a municipal notgeld from Xanten; it's one of the very very few "places starting with X" to issue any kind of numismatic item.

#4: You're close. A with an umlaut is spelled "ae" when translated into English (or typed on a typewriter/computer that can't handle umlauts easily) and your capital "E" is actually a "C" - this is from Fränkisch-Crumbach. Coffing p.116 (where it's spelled "Fraenkisch").

#5: Here's where German really starts to look like a foreign language. This one's from the city of Pößneck, Thuringia. O with an umlaut is Anglicized "oe" and the eszett becomes "ss", so it's listed in Coffing under "Poessneck", p.186. The 75 pfennig note from this same series is one of the illustrated notes, on p.244.

Hope this helps.

Yep, a "Baustein" would be a brick, and the idea was that, by buying such a note or rather receipt, you would contribute to the restoration of the Dom. As for the place name, Xanten (in the state of North Rhine Westphalia) is indeed the only German city name that begins with an X. No idea why - the Roman name was Colonia Ulpia Traiana (north of what today is the inner city), and the medieval Latin name referred to the saints (Sanctum, or Ad Sanctos), so the result could have been a simple Santen. But nooo ...

Oh, and that chocolate note, mnyum!

Christian