10 Pfennig

Siegburg's 1921 Kleingeldersatz issue belongs to the wave of municipal emergency money — Notgeld — that flooded Germany as the Reichsbank failed to keep small-denomination coinage in circulation during the inflationary spiral. Cities, towns, and even individual businesses were legally permitted to plug the gap, which they did with varying degrees of seriousness. Siegburg contracted local printing to Photogravur Siegburg, an uncommon arrangement; most municipalities outsourced to larger specialist houses in Leipzig or Berlin.

The watermarked paper is the detail worth noting — a security measure that many comparable Notgeld issues skipped entirely, suggesting the city treasurer took counterfeiting risk more seriously than most. Three variants are catalogued under DeNG 1225.1-3, differentiated by serial numbering or minor typographic differences.