10 Pfennig Trachenberg; Kolonialwarenhändler

A grocery co-operative issuing its own emergency currency is not unusual for Weimar-era Notgeld, but this piece predates that better-known wave — it belongs to the earlier, grimmer phase of WWI shortages, when small trading associations across Germany and Austria-Hungary scrambled to facilitate local commerce as coin disappeared into hoarding and metal requisitions. The Einkaufs-Genossenschaft here was a purchasing syndicate of colonial goods dealers — "Kolonialwaren" meaning imported staples like sugar, coffee, and spices — bound together to pool buying power.

Hugo Ebnöther printed this in the same town of issue, Trachenberg in Silesia, keeping the entire operation local. Both signatories, Blumberg and Rauer, were almost certainly board members of the cooperative rather than banking officials.