10 Pfennig Sparkasse

Lauenburg an der Elbe issued its own emergency small-change notes in 1918 because the wartime metal shortage had stripped German circulation of nearly all low-denomination coinage. The Sparkasse — the municipal savings institution, not a commercial bank — acted as issuer under the broad Notgeld framework that allowed hundreds of German towns to plug the change gap locally. These were never intended as long-term instruments; they circulated within the town and were theoretically redeemable once coinage returned.

The DeNG reference places this in the first catalogued series for Lauenburg, variant two. Paper Notgeld at this denomination deteriorated quickly in daily use, and surviving examples in sound condition are proportionally rarer than their original print runs would suggest.