10 Pfennigs red issue

Diepholz is a small administrative district in Lower Saxony, and this note is exactly what one would expect from a rural German savings institution scrambling to fill the coin vacuum of 1920. The severe postwar shortage of copper and nickel coinage pushed hundreds of local authorities — municipal governments, savings banks, transport companies — into issuing their own Kleingeldersatz, small-change substitutes, under emergency powers. Gebrüder Jänecke in Hannover handled enormous volumes of this work for Niedersachsen issuers, which means production quality is consistent but the notes themselves were never intended to outlast the shortage.

Three authorizing signatures is slightly unusual for a note of this denomination — most comparable Notgeld of this value carried one or two.