Dedicated to Bitcoin Moses.

We were surprised to discover such a very unusual kind of Weimar Notgeld. The literal meaning of the word is "Emergency Money" and the item to be considered is from 7th November 1923. It was the inflation peak which is marked with the red star on the Goldmark price plot. Notgeld gave the German Weimar Republic hyperinflation such a distinctive feature because they were very different. Back in 1920s many businesses and municipalities as well practiced issuing their own money mostly as a measure to ease the inconveniences of direct barter. It might be as well an excuse for speculative behavior because while anticipating a shortage of means of payment, Reichsbank accepted emergency money from virtually anybody allowing speculation against the falling Reichsmark.

Guttman gives Harold Fraser’s report from 1st August 1923. He was working in the bank at that time:

There is now a great shortage of money and it is impossible to get more than the equivalent of £1 in any one day. This morning I was watching the huge crowd in the Deutsche Bank waiting to get money. There were so many people that queues approaching 50 people each were formed in front of each cashier. In fact it was found necessary to have policemen regulating the crowds.

Any hyperinflation event is always accompanied by “shortage” of means of payment. It may be real money, it may be devaluing paper means of payment because people always need more and more of them.

In 1922 it (issuance of Emergency Money) rose to 1,295 milliards, and, in October 1923, reached the sum of 25 trillions. By the middle of November 1923, it had risen to 92 trillions, and at the same time the total amount of all kinds of emergency "Money in circulation topped the figure of 500 trillions. 

These numbers are bizarre and although the inconvenience of a rusty bucket stuffed with paper money is clear, there is more important invisible damage done via the uncontrolled expansion of numbers on paper bills. The price system is being destroyed and businesses become paralyzed just as a result of the impossibility to get enough raw materials and put a price tag on final goods. That’s why some of Notgelds issued by businesses weren’t just valued against paper mark but provided a certificate for payment in kind whether it was coal, textile, or potato. However, among them, another kind of Notgeld circulated in Weimar. Gold-backed and dollar-backed emergency money was special. 1 Pfennig was 1\100 of Goldmark. Having a certificate in 21 pfennigs seemed strange but it was likely a weird mix of the gold dollar and abandoned gold mark standards. William Guttman describes his personal experience:

I had managed to get hold of a couple of small denomination gold-loan certificates, the stable money that preceded the issue of the Rentenmark: they had been rare and I had hoarded them carefully. Now that the Rentenmark began to flow, there was no longer any reason to preserve them. So I pulled out of my note-case the piece of paper on which was written “One Tenth of a Dollar”, or 42 pfennig, paid and departed proudly. The sensation of handling and getting without difficulty value for this money bearing one or two digits was indescribable; it gave a sense of security, prosperity, real happiness. There was, as Hans Fallada put It, “magic in these low figures” — a symbol of the miracle.

So the answer for the strange 21 pfennig bill is simple: it was 1/20 of a dollar or 5 cents. This is a simple coincidence but this number has another special meaning nowadays: Bitcoin has little more than 21 million coins to be issued ever contrary to unlimited money printing conducted in Weimar times.

Quotes are from "Great Inflation: Germany, 1923" by William Guttman and Patricia Meehan