10 Mark

Ludwigshafen's municipal administration issued this note during the final year of the First World War, when the German imperial government had effectively lost control of the money supply at the local level. Stadtgeld of this type — emergency municipal paper — proliferated across Germany from 1914 onward as small coin disappeared into hoarding and metal drives. Weiß & Hameier, printing locally, would have been producing these under considerable material constraints; paper quality in German commercial printing deteriorated sharply after 1916.

Ludwigshafen was a major BASF industrial center, which made its municipal finances unusually bound to wartime chemical production.