1 Mark

Leipzig's Fürsorgeamt — the municipal welfare office — issued this note in the chaotic early months of the Weimar Republic, when the German central money supply was collapsing under postwar strain and dozens of German municipalities printed their own emergency Notgeld to keep local commerce moving. The Rat der Stadt Leipzig gave its welfare office specific authority to circulate these small-denomination scrip notes, partly to pay out relief to the unemployed and destitute flooding the city after demobilization.

Leipzig was an unusually active Notgeld producer in 1919, with multiple city departments issuing their own series. Attribution to the Fürsorgeamt specifically makes this a welfare-issue note rather than a general civic scrip — a meaningful distinction in terms of the economic function it was designed to serve.