10 Pfennig Sparkasse

Quedlinburg's municipal savings bank — the Städtische Sparkasse — issued small-denomination notgeld like this during the acute coin shortage that gripped Germany in the early 1920s. Metallic small change had been hoarded, melted, or simply failed to keep pace with inflating prices, forcing hundreds of local authorities and institutions to print their own stop-gap fractional currency. The Sparkasse was acting as a de facto municipal issuer, a role savings banks across Germany quietly assumed during this period.

H. Meyerding was a local Quedlinburg printer, which is exactly what you'd expect for a 10 Pfennig emergency piece — there was no reason to commission a specialist security printer for a note nobody expected to circulate beyond the town market.