10 Pfennig

Traunstein's 1920 Pfennig-denomination notgeld belongs to the wave of small-change emergency currency that flooded Bavaria and the rest of Germany as metal coinage disappeared from circulation during and after the First World War. By 1920 the Reichsbank had still not resolved the subsidiary coinage shortage, leaving municipalities like Traunstein to print their own fractional notes — a practice the central authorities tolerated without enthusiasm.

These small Bavarian municipal issues were typically printed in short runs by local printers and redeemed quickly, which paradoxically makes intact survivors more common than their circulation numbers suggest: most were saved by collectors rather than spent.