10 Pfennig

Zella-Mehlis was a notable center of precision manufacturing — particularly arms and tools — and its local Notgeld issues reflect the municipality's need to address the acute small-change shortage that plagued provincial Germany in the immediate postwar years. The Stadtrat, not a bank, issued this directly, a common arrangement for Thuringian towns where civic councils stepped in when the Reichsbank could not supply adequate coinage.

The 1919–1920 dating window suggests the note remained in theoretical validity through the transition period before hyperinflation rendered low-denomination scrip irrelevant entirely.