10 Pfennig-Gold

Landsberg an der Warthe — today Gorzów Wielkopolski in Poland — was among the hundreds of German municipalities that issued gold-denominated Notgeld during the hyperinflation of 1923, when the Reichsmark had become effectively worthless for everyday transactions. Denominating the note in Pfennig-Gold rather than paper marks was a deliberate act of monetary self-defense: by pegging to a gold standard equivalent, the issuer attempted to give the scrip a stable value that paper-mark notes could no longer credibly claim.

The Stadtgirokasse, a municipal giro and savings institution rather than a commercial bank, had authority to issue such emergency instruments at the local government level. These gold-pfennig notes were typically short-lived, rendered obsolete once the Rentenmark stabilization took hold in November 1923.