10 Pfennig

Hirschberg's 10 Pfennig Notgeld belongs to the first wave of municipal emergency issues that flooded Germany in 1920, when the Reichsbank's coin shortage — a direct consequence of wartime metal requisitioning and postwar hoarding — pushed local governments to print their own small-denomination scrip. Stadtgemeinde Hirschberg, a mid-sized Silesian commercial town, was among hundreds of municipalities legally permitted to do so under temporary Reich authorization.

Silesian Notgeld from this window is complicated by the plebiscite crisis: the 1921 Upper Silesia vote and its aftermath created genuine uncertainty about whether certain towns would remain German, which affected how aggressively local authorities spent money on elaborate printings. Hirschberg, in Lower Silesia, was never in the disputed zone and stayed firmly within German borders — so these notes were issued and redeemed under stable, if inflationary, conditions.