1 Mark

Grünhain is a small town in the Erzgebirge, and its municipal council — the Stadtgemeinderat — issued this note as Kriegsgeld, the emergency paper money that proliferated across German municipalities after metallic coinage effectively vanished from circulation following the outbreak of war in 1914. By 1917 the shortage was acute enough that even minor administrative bodies were authorized to issue low-denomination scrip to keep local commerce functioning.

Wiedemannsche Druckerei AG in Saalfeld was a regional commercial printer, not a specialist security firm, which makes the presence of a watermark here worth noting — a modest but deliberate concession to fraud prevention in what was otherwise utilitarian wartime production.