10 Pfennig Bezirkssparkasse

Mellrichstadt is a small market town in Lower Franconia, and its Bezirkssparkasse — a district savings bank rather than a municipal or state institution — was among hundreds of local German savings banks that issued Notgeld during the acute coin shortage of 1920. The federal government had essentially abdicated responsibility for small-denomination coinage, leaving it to municipalities, cooperatives, and institutions like this one to fill the gap with their own emergency paper.

At 48 × 32 mm, this is among the smallest format Notgeld produced in that wave — closer to a tram ticket than a banknote.