10 Centimes Sinte Kathelijne Waver

During the German occupation of Belgium in World War One, hundreds of municipalities were forced to issue their own emergency paper fractional currency — gemeentekas or noodbons — after occupation authorities drained the country of coin. Sint-Katelijne-Waver, a small agricultural commune southeast of Mechelen, was among the smallest communities to produce such notes, and surviving examples are proportionally scarce simply because so few were printed to begin with.

Belgian municipal issues of this period were typically authorized under local council resolution and printed by whatever printer was accessible under wartime conditions. The Antwerp provincial communes often used local job printers, which accounts for the typographic simplicity common to this series.