10 Pfennig

Weißensee is a small Thuringian town that issued this cardboard Notgeld piece during the acute coin shortage that followed Germany's postwar economic dislocation — metal coinage had effectively vanished from everyday commerce by 1921, hoarded or melted, leaving municipalities to plug the gap with whatever they could print locally. Two separate firms handled production: Alfred Hanf in Erfurt and C. G. Naumann in Leipzig, a split-printing arrangement that was not unusual for small-town issues scrambling to meet demand quickly.

Cardboard examples from this period are more susceptible to edge wear and moisture damage than paper equivalents. Survivors in genuinely unhandled condition are harder to source than the catalog numbers suggest.