1 Pfennig

Witten's municipal 1 Pfennig notgeld from 1919 belongs to the enormous wave of small-denomination emergency paper issued by German towns when wartime coin hoarding left everyday commerce paralyzed. At one Pfennig, this is about as low as paper money gets — a denomination that existed on paper precisely because no one could spare the metal equivalent. The Magistrat der Stadt Witten had neither the facility nor the mandate of a central bank; these notes were printed locally, validated by official stamp, and expected to disappear quickly once coinage returned to circulation.

The DeNG reference places this within a documented local series, suggesting at least minor variation existed across the Witten issues — the "a" suffix indicating a specific subtype, likely a paper stock or stamp difference from its siblings.