10 Pfennig

Fallersleben — a small town in Lower Saxony best known as the birthplace of August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, who wrote the text that would become the German national anthem — issued this Notgeld piece during the chaotic small-change shortage that gripped Weimar Germany in 1920. Municipal authorities across Germany were producing their own emergency fractional currency at this point, most of it printed regionally and redeemable only locally.

Appelhans in Braunschweig handled a substantial volume of municipal Notgeld work for towns across Lower Saxony during this period. The Magistrat series from Fallersleben is a minor issue from a minor municipality, but the town's literary association gave local designers an obvious iconographic hook that few seem to have resisted.