10 Pfennig

Düren issued this note as part of the vast wave of municipal Notgeld that flooded Germany in 1919, when coin shortages — driven by wartime hoarding and metal requisitions — left local economies with almost no small denomination currency in circulation. Cities, towns, even individual businesses printed their own stop-gap scrip, and the Reichsbank largely looked the other way. The result was thousands of distinct issues, most of negligible face value and enormous variety.

Düren's issue is unadorned emergency scrip rather than the decorative collector-targeted Notgeld that emerged from 1920 onward. The distinction matters for dating: once municipalities realized collectors were buying the notes, designs grew elaborate. This one predates that shift.