10 Mark

Alfeld an der Leine is a small mill town in Lower Saxony, and its 1918 emergency currency — Notgeld in the strict wartime sense, not the decorative collector issues that followed — was a practical response to the acute coin shortage that gripped German municipalities as the war drained metal from circulation. Town administrations were authorized to fill that gap themselves, which is why a modest Leine valley community ends up as a note-issuing authority.

J. C. König & Ebhardt of Hannover were primarily a paper and stationery house, not a dedicated security printer, which shows in the relatively plain execution typical of their municipal commissions from this period.