2,5 Mark 1921, Insterburg, Germany
| Manfred Mehl. Deutsche Serienscheine | Number: 645.1 |
| Years of issue: | 1921 |
| Edition: | -- |
| Signatures: | no signature |
| Serie: | Notgeld of East Prussia (today Russia) |
| Specimen of: | 1921 |
| Material: | Paper |
| Size (mm): | 90 х 62 |
| Printer: | Karl Flemming & C. T. Wiskott A. G., Glögau |
* All pictures marked 
are increased partially by magnifying glass, the remaining open in full size by clicking on the image.
** The word "Specimen" is present only on some of electronic pictures, in accordance with banknote images publication rules of appropriate banks.
Description
Watermark:
Linked hooks (Hakenmäander).
Avers:
On banknote are Old market place (Der Alter Markt) and Lutheran church (Lutherkirche). More about Lutherkirche please read in reverse description.
Lower, on the banknote, is a poem by Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Jordan:
"Das großes ich mich zugefreut, das ich mein Volk vergnügt, erbaut, die halbe Welt mit meinem Liede durchzog als deutscher Homeride, mir Beifall, Andacht zu ersiegen vermochte bis die Spötter schwiegen dazu der zähe Wagemut das tapfre Herz, das rasche Blut, die Willenskraft, die Selbstgewiss, nicht Feinde scheut noch Hinderniss, stets furchtlos rief: "Ich muss hindurch!" - Sie keimten mir zu Insterburg.
Frankfurt am Main, Ostern 1899
Dr.Wilhelm Jordan".
I could not find a professional translation of the poem, so I apologize for the lack of rhyme.
In English it is translated like this:
"I big me happy that I amused my people, built them, half the world with my song pervaded as the German Home Ride me applause, was able to ersiegen devotion to the scoffers were silent to the tenacious audacity the brave heart that rapid blood, that willpower, the self-confident, not afraid of enemies nor obstacle, always fearlessly shouted: "I have to pass!" - They germinated me to Insterburg.
Frankfurt am Main, Easter 1899
Dr.Wilhelm Jordan".
Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Jordan, sometimes shortened to Wilhelm Jordan (8 February 1819 in Insterburg in East Prussia, now in Russia – 25 June 1904 in Frankfurt am Main), was a German writer and politician.
Jordan was the son of the pastor Charles Augustus Jordan and attended gymnasiums in Gumbinnen and Tilsit. From 1838 he studied theology at the University of Königsberg and became a member of the Corps Littuania. His university friends included the liberals Rudolf von Gottschall and Ferdinand Gregorovius – Jordan and Gregorovius read out the poem of welcome on behalf of the student body at the ceremony of homage for the king and queen of Prussia.
Thrilled by Feuerbach and Hegel, Jordan gave up his preacher course and switched to philosophy and the sciences. After graduating Doctor of Philosophy at the Albertus-Universität (1842) he moved to Berlin to work as a writer. In 1843 he was convicted of liberal anti-Christian writings and moved from Berlin to Leipzig, where in 1845-1846 he worked for the magazine "Die begriffene Welt". He was expelled from Leipzig in 1846 for his political activities and moved to Bremen, where he worked for the Bremer Zeitung, becoming its foreign correspondent in Berlin and Paris.
From 18 May 1848 to 20 May 1849 he was the liberal member for Freienwalde in the Frankfurt Parliament, which he called the "great university of my life". There he joined Heinrich von Gagern and called for a greater German Empire led by Prussia. For this reason, in a speech on 24 July 1848 in a debate about the "Drang nach Osten", he argued against restoring an independent Polish nation state and against supporting the Polish struggle for independence. Poles, he claimed, would soon join Russians and "life and death" struggle would ensue with Germans.
On this matter he called for a "gesunden Volksegoismus" (a healthy Volk-egoism), which quickly became a buzzword for his opponent Robert Blum and was also developed into the "national egoism" advocated by the Polish nationalist Roman Dmowski. Jordan was also on the Marinerat in the Reichshandelsministerium (Reich trade ministry) and worked on building a national fleet.
After his retirement, he went on many lecture tours, popularising the Nibelungenlied among other things - one of these took him to the USA in 1871. On his eightieth birthday his birthplace of Insterburg made him an honorary citizen.
His literary works are rooted in XIX century historicism and profoundly influenced by Ludwig Klages and his school friend Theodor Lessing. His plays, poems and novels are dominated by philosophical and scientific ideas. His main work was his Nibelungen Epos, written in Stabreim (alliterative verse) - in it, he used the Old Norse saga of the same name and the Lay of Hildebrand as his main sources but subjected the action to a time-related psychological interpretation.
In the XX century he was often seen (in the words of René Simon Taube) as "a precursor of Nietzsche and pioneer of Darwin in Germany". Today his work is little known, except for his 'mysterium' Demiurgos and his translation of the Edda, both still in use due to their sensitive language and epic depth. His Demiurgos cannot, as is generally claimed, be considered as the "first serious biography of Max Stirner". It is more of a literary sketch rather than a biographical account of Stirner's life, especially since he is only mentioned in one section rather than throughout the work. 
Denominations in numerals are in top corners.
Revers:
The silhouette of the Insterburg city.
The inscription in German: "City Savings Bank will pay to each bearer of the coupon 2,5 Mark"
Some objects on the silhouette I have identified:
The Lutheran Church (also: city church) in the East Prussian city of Insterburg (now Russian: Tschernjachowsk) was a choir loose plastered brick and built in the years 1610 to 1612. Until 1945 she was - from 1911 together with the Melanchthonkirche - the main Protestant church in the "city of three rivers". It was blown up in 1972 and demolished, its wall remains thereafter.
The Lutheran Church in the Old Market, of great artistic value, built in 1610-1612 with a tower from the XIX century, which was damaged in 1945, then demolished in 1972 and the ruins then removed. There are only a few vaults and arches wall on the staircase that leads down to the river.
One of the church bells of the Lutheran Church, which had to be delivered in 1942 to melt for the armaments industry, was found after the war back to the bells cemetery in Hamburg Freeport. Ushers since 1952 in the St. Nicolai Church in Hannover-Bothfeld. A bronze plaque, designed by the East Prussian artist Gerhard Wydra, reminds on the initiative of Heinz Albat and Pastor Hans-Heinz von Klaeden to their origin since 1990 levels. The Insterburger Conrad Olefant have donated this bell to 1639 citizens. After it had gotten a crack and had to be melted down in 1722, as documented by an inscription on the bell. Parts of the altar of the Lutheran Church are, reassembled, in the parish of Morag (Pfarrkirche von Mohrungen).
The water tower (Wasserturm) in Insterburg, on Kasernenstraße. The photo made in 1935.
Chernyakhovsk (Russian: Черняхо́вск); prior to 1946 known by its German name About this sound Insterburg (Lithuanian: Įsrutis; Polish: Wystruć) is a town and the administrative center of Chernyakhovsky District in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Instruch and Angrapa Rivers, forming the Pregolya.#
It was founded in 1336, after the Prussian Crusade, when the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights Dietrich von Altenburg built a castle called Instierburg at the site of a former Old Prussian fortification. During their campaign against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the place was devastated in 1376 and again by Polish troops in 1457. The castle had been rebuilt as the seat of a Procurator and a settlement grew up to serve it, also called Insterburg.
When Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach in 1525 secularized the monastic State of the Teutonic Order, Insterburg became part of the Duchy of Prussia and was granted town privileges on October 10, 1583 by the Prussian regent Margrave George Frederick.[citation needed] The town became part of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701. Because the area had been depopulated by plague in the early 18th century, King Frederick William I of Prussia invited Protestant refugees who had been expelled from the Archbishopric of Salzburg to settle in Insterburg in 1732.
In 1818, after the Napoleonic Wars, the town became the seat of Insterburg District within the Gumbinnen Region. Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly died at Insterburg in 1818 on his way from his Livonian manor to Germany, where he wanted to renew his health.
In 1863, a Polish secret organization was founded and operated in Insterburg. It was involved in arms trafficking to the Russian Partition of Poland during the January Uprising. Since May 1864 its leader was Józef Racewicz.
Insterburg became a part of the German Empire during the 1871 unification of Germany. On May 1, 1901, it became an independent city separate from Insterburg District. After World War I, the town was separated from the rest of Weimar Germany, as the province of East Prussia had become an exclave. The association football club Yorck Boyen Insterburg was formed in 1921.
During World War II, Insterburg was heavily bombed by the British Royal Air Force on July 27, 1944. The town was stormed by Red Army troops on January 21-22, 1945. As part of the northern part of East Prussia, Insterburg was transferred from Germany to the Soviet Union after the war as previously agreed between the victorious powers at the Potsdam Conference. The German population was either evacuated or expelled and replaced with Russians. In 1946, Insterburg was renamed Chernyakhovsk in honor of the Soviet World War II General of the Army Ivan Chernyakhovsky, who commanded the army that first entered East Prussia in 1944.
After 1989, a group of people introduced the Akhal-Teke horse breed to the area and opened an Akhal-Teke breeding stable.
Denominations in numerals are in top corners.
Comments:
Printed on laid paper (Büttenpapier).
Laid paper is a type of paper having a ribbed texture imparted by the manufacturing process. In the pre-mechanical period of European papermaking (from the XII century into the XIX century), laid paper was the predominant kind of paper produced. Its use, however, diminished in the XIX century, when it was largely supplanted by wove paper. Laid paper is still commonly used by artists as a support for charcoal drawings.
Before the mechanization of papermaking, the laid pattern was produced by the wire sieve in the rectangular mold used to produce single sheets of paper. A worker would dip the mold into a vat containing diluted linen pulp, then lift it out, tilt it to spread the pulp evenly over the sieve, and, as the water drained out between the wires, shake the mold to lock the fibers together. In the process, the pattern of the wires in the sieve was imparted to the sheet of paper.
Modern papermaking techniques use a dandy roll to create the laid pattern during the early stages of manufacture, in the same way as applying a paper watermark. While in the wet state, the paper stock (a dilute dispersion of the cellulose fibers in water) is drained on a wire mesh to de-water the stock. During this process, a dandy roll with a laid mesh pattern is pressed into the wet stock, displacing the cellulose fiber. This pattern has to be applied at a particular stock consistency; otherwise the pattern will be lost as the fiber flows back while the stock moves past the dandy (too wet), or fiber will pick out of the stock (too dry), causing surface disruption. As the fiber is displaced, localized areas of higher and lower density are produced in a laid pattern, and the pattern is also created on the paper's surface. The pattern is therefore apparent both as one looks through the sheet and as one views its surface. Applying the laid pattern as a mechanical emboss would not create the laid pattern effect on the look-through, as this is only achieved by watermarking techniques.
The traditional laid pattern consists of a series of wide spaced lines (chain lines) parallel to the shorter sides of the sheet or, in machine made paper, running in the machine direction—and more narrowly spaced lines (laid lines) which are at 90 degrees to the chain lines.
Notgeld (German for "emergency money" or "necessity money") refers to money issued by an institution in a time of economic or political crisis. The issuing institution is usually one without official sanction from the central government. This occurs usually when sufficient state-produced money is not available from the central bank. Most notably, notgeld generally refers to money produced in Germany and Austria during World War I and the Interbellum. Issuing institutions could be a town's savings banks, municipality and private or state-owned firms.
Notgeld was mainly issued in the form of (paper) banknotes. Sometimes other forms were used, as well: coins, leather, silk, linen, postage stamps, aluminium foil, coal, and porcelain; there are also reports of elemental sulfur being used, as well as all sorts of re-used paper and carton material (e.g. playing cards). These pieces made from playing cards are extremely rare and are known as Spielkarten, the German word for "playing card".
Notgeld was a mutually-accepted means of payment in a particular region or locality, but notes could travel widely. Notgeld is different from occupation money that is issued by an occupying army during a war.
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