Großenhain's municipal council issued this small-denomination Notgeld during the acute coin shortage that followed Germany's wartime metal requisitioning — by 1918, even low-value copper and nickel coinage had been systematically pulled from circulation for the war effort, forcing hundreds of German towns to print their own emergency paper in fractional values nobody had previously bothered to paper-issue. The watermark is notable: most Kleingeldscheine at this level dispensed with security features entirely, making its presence here either a deliberate gesture toward credibility or simply a consequence of whatever paper stock the Stadtrat could source locally.
Großenhain's municipal council issued this small-denomination Notgeld during the acute coin shortage that followed Germany's wartime metal requisitioning — by 1918, even low-value copper and nickel coinage had been systematically pulled from circulation for the war effort, forcing hundreds of German towns to print their own emergency paper in fractional values nobody had previously bothered to paper-issue. The watermark is notable: most Kleingeldscheine at this level dispensed with security features entirely, making its presence here either a deliberate gesture toward credibility or simply a consequence of whatever paper stock the Stadtrat could source locally.