Beverungen, emergency currency, 75 pfennigs notgeld, with an anti-Jewish cartoon
Extent and Medium
overall: Height: 2.375 inches (6.032 cm) | Width: 3.500 inches (8.89 cm)
Creator(s)
- Peter Ehrenthal (Compiler)
Biographical History
The Katz Ehrenthal Collection is a collection of more than 900 objects depicting Jews and antisemitic and anti-Jewish propaganda from the medieval to the modern era, in Europe, Russia, and the United States. The collection was amassed by Peter Ehrenthal, a Romanian Holocaust survivor, to document the pervasive history of anti-Jewish hatred in Western art, politics and popular culture. It includes crude folk art as well as pieces created by Europe's finest craftsmen, prints and periodical illustrations, posters, paintings, decorative art, and toys and everyday household items decorated with depictions of stereotypical Jewish figures.
Archival History
The bank note was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2016 by the Katz Family.
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Katz Family
Funding Note: The cataloging of this artifact has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
Scope and Content
State of Beverungen, Germany, emergency currency note [notgeld] for 75 pfennings issued in the period of hyperinflation during the Weimar Republic. The note was a temporary issue, valid for one year. On the back is an anti-Jewish image of an orthodox Jewish man in a barber's chair. Many politicians and members of the public blamed the Jews for the financial crises and other widely circulated antisemitic slogans accused Jews of taking all the gold and money and leaving Germans Dreck. The bank note is one of more than 900 items in the Katz Ehrenthal Collection of antisemitic visual materials.
Conditions Governing Access
No restrictions on access
Conditions Governing Reproduction
No restrictions on use
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Emergency currency on rectangular offwhite paper with brown ink on the face and a black, blue, red, and yellow image on the back. The face has a view of a town with a church steeple in the center and German text on the left. In panels on the right and left is the denomination 75 pfs in the upper left and lower right corners, with the date of issue on the left and the state seal, Magistrat Der Stadt Beverungen, on the tight. The back has a paragraph of German text on the left and a multicolored cartoon of a bald headed Jewish man with curly sidelocks and beard seated in a barber's chair. At his side is a barber with a comb in his hair slathering shaving cream on the Jewish mans face. Two long hooked bars protude from the Jewish man's open mouth. On the back wall is a sign, Bier! [Beer.] In the border around the image are repeated images of a spoon, straight razors, combs, and brushes.
Subjects
- Paper money--Germany--Beverungen.
- Inflation (Finance)--Germany--History--20th century.
- Financial crises--Germany--History--20th century.
- Beverungen (Germany)--Economic conditions--1918-1933.
- Antisemitism--Germany--Beverungen--History--20th century.
- Anti-Jewish propaganda--Germany--History--20th century.
Genre
- Object
- Exchange Media