10 Pfennig

Rathenow's 1917–1918 Kleingeldersatz notes belong to the first wave of municipal emergency money issued across Germany as the Reichsbank's coin hoarding crisis deepened during the war. Faber of Magdeburg handled a significant volume of this type of small-denomination municipal printing work in the region, turning around orders quickly for towns that lacked the luxury of waiting for central government relief.

Rathenow itself was an optics manufacturing center — home to lens and spectacle production since the 17th century — which gave it an unusual wartime industrial profile. Its Notgeld was functional, not decorative; the elaborate artistic series that would come from other towns arrived later, in 1920–1921.