1 Mark

Freienohl is a small village on the Ruhr river in the Sauerland, and its Gemeindekasse — the municipal treasury, not a bank — issued this note as Notgeld during the acute small-change shortage that gripped Germany in the early 1920s. Thousands of German municipalities did the same, but most were larger towns. A settlement this size producing its own emergency currency is unusual enough to mark it as genuinely local necessity rather than the collectible-oriented Serienscheine that larger cities were printing for profit by 1921–22.

Westphalian municipal Notgeld from villages under 1,000 residents is consistently underrepresented in major collections.