10 Pfennig

Lewin (now Lewín Brzeski in southwestern Poland) was a small Lower Silesian market town, and its magistrate issued this 10 Pfennig note as Notgeld during the acute coin shortage that followed the First World War. Municipal and local authorities across Germany issued millions of these emergency pieces between 1919 and 1922, many as little more than stamped slips of paper with no pretense of sophistication. The official stamp here is the only security measure — which tells you everything about how quickly these were produced and how locally they were expected to circulate.