10 Pfennig H. Käse

H. Käse was a Hamburg cheese merchant — "Käse" meaning cheese — who issued this 10 Pfennig Notgeld in 1921 during the small-denomination coin shortage that plagued postwar Germany. Municipal and commercial Notgeld of this period was officially tolerated as emergency fractional currency, and tradesmen, shops, and local businesses across Germany printed millions of these small notes to make change. Broschek & Co. were a well-established Hamburg printing and publishing house, and their involvement here was entirely routine — they handled significant volumes of commercial Notgeld for local Hamburg issuers.

The watermark security feature is worth noting for a tradesman's note of this type and denomination; many comparable pieces from small private issuers dispensed with it entirely.