1 Mark

Ehrenfriedersdorf, a small mining town in the Erzgebirge, issued this note during the acute coin shortage that swept Germany in the early 1920s. Municipalities, local businesses, and even individual shops printed their own emergency currency — Notgeld — when the Reichsbank simply could not supply enough small-denomination coinage to keep daily commerce moving. Ehrenfriedersdorf's tin-mining history stretches back to the medieval period, and by 1921 the town's industrial decline made the administrative effort behind even modest Notgeld issues a meaningful gesture of local economic management.

Series from small Erzgebirge communities in this period were often printed in short runs and collected rather than spent, which complicates any honest assessment of genuine circulation wear.