1 Mark Niederwiesa

Niederwiesa is a small Saxon municipality near Chemnitz, and like hundreds of comparable German communities, it issued emergency cardboard notes — Notgeld — during the acute coin shortage of 1916–1922. These hyperlocal issues were necessitated by the hoarding and eventual disappearance of metal coinage as the war ground on and base metals were requisitioned for munitions. Municipal administrations, firms, and even individual merchants stepped in to fill the gap with whatever they could print or stamp.

Cardboard issues from villages this small typically had negligible print runs by national standards, and redemption records were rarely kept with any rigor. Many were never presented for exchange at all.