10 Marks

Plöner Städtische Spar- und Leihkasse was a municipal savings and loan institution in Plön, a small town in Schleswig-Holstein. This 10 Mark note belongs to the vast wave of German Notgeld issued by local authorities, savings banks, and even private firms during the hyperinflationary spiral of the early 1920s, when the Reichsbank's inability to supply adequate small-denomination currency forced municipalities to fill the gap themselves. By 1922 the situation was deteriorating rapidly — the German mark had lost most of its prewar value, and locally issued emergency money was the practical reality of daily commerce in hundreds of German towns.

Schleswig-Holstein municipal Notgeld from this period was rarely redeemed before the issuing institutions either collapsed or were overtaken by currency reform. The Rentenmark stabilization of November 1923 rendered all such paper worthless.