10 Pfennig

Sondershausen notgeld from 1921 falls into the second wave of German municipal emergency money — issued not from genuine coin shortages, as in 1914–1918, but because the Reichsbank was struggling to keep small denominations in circulation amid accelerating inflation. By this point, hundreds of Thuringian towns were printing their own 10 and 50 Pfennig notes, and the series had become semi-collectible almost immediately, with some municipalities openly printing surplus runs for the philatelic trade.

Sondershausen was the former residence of the Schwarzburg-Sondershausen principality, absorbed into Thuringia in 1920 — barely a year before this note was printed.