10 Pfennig

Lorch am Rhein is a small wine-growing town in the Rheingau, and like hundreds of German municipalities in 1920, it issued its own emergency fractional currency — Kleingeldscheine — to address the severe coin shortage that persisted well after the armistice. The Reichsbank had little interest in supplying copper and nickel to small towns when metal remained scarce and inflation was already destabilizing the broader economy.

The watermark security feature is notable for a note of this denomination and local origin; many comparable Stadtgeld issues from minor municipalities dispensed with such measures entirely. Whether this reflects a specific paper stock purchase or a deliberate choice by the issuing authority is not documented in the standard references.