10 Pfennigs Saarlouis

Saarlouis issued its own emergency small-change notes in 1919 because the postwar coin shortage had made everyday transactions nearly impossible — a problem shared by hundreds of German municipalities that year, producing the vast wave of Kleingeldscheine now known collectively as Notgeld. What sets Saarlouis apart is the timing: the city was placed under League of Nations administration as part of the Saar Territory in 1920, making any civic paper issued in 1919 a product of a municipality that would shortly cease to exercise independent German authority altogether.

Printed locally by the Saarlouiser Journal A.G., the note's production was entirely domestic — no outside printer, no shipped stock.