10 Pfennig Bank für Handel und Industrie

The Bank für Handel und Industrie was a Frankfurt-based commercial institution, but its Greiz branch — operating in the small Thuringian residency town that had been the capital of the Principality of Reuss Younger Line until just a year before this note was issued — issued its own emergency small-change notes when the postwar coin shortage hit in 1919. These Kleingeldscheine filled a genuine gap: copper and nickel had been requisitioned heavily during the war, and pfennig coins had effectively vanished from everyday transactions.

At 64 × 42 mm, this is notgeld at its most minimal — a slip of printed paper deputizing for a coin worth a fraction of almost nothing.