10 Pfennigs

Flatow — today Złotów in northwestern Poland — issued this note in 1917 as part of the vast wave of municipal and district emergency currency that flooded Germany once wartime metal shortages made small coin production unsustainable. The Kreisausschuss, the elected administrative committee overseeing the rural Flatow district, had the legal authority to authorize such issues under Prussian administrative law, and thousands of similar Notgeld authorities exercised the same right across the Reich that year.

Local printing for district-level Notgeld was overwhelmingly common, and Flatow was no exception — the note was almost certainly produced by a regional press rather than a specialist security printer, which accounts for the relatively simple execution typical of Kreis-level issues.