1 Mark

Datteln's municipal office issued this note in the opening weeks of the First World War, when the German government's emergency decrees of August 1914 triggered a nationwide small-change crisis. Coin hoarding was immediate and severe, and hundreds of German municipalities scrambled to produce their own Notgeld to keep local commerce moving. The Amt Datteln — a rural administrative district rather than a town with a developed financial infrastructure — turned to the Druckerei- und Verlagsgesellschaft in nearby Lütgendortmund, a regional commercial printer with no particular banknote pedigree.

The coloured stripe was a minimal concession to security, typical of these rushed wartime municipal issues where anti-counterfeiting sophistication was less important than speed of production.