10 Pfennig Westhavelländische Vereinsbank

Westhavelländische Vereinsbank was a regional cooperative bank (Genossenschaftsbank) serving the Westhavelland district around Rathenow, a town better known for its optical instruments industry than its financial institutions. This note belongs to the vast wave of privately issued Kriegsnotgeld that flooded Germany from 1916 onward as coin hoarding gutted small-denomination circulation. The cooperative banking sector issued some of the most locally specific emergency currency of the period — denominations that would never have existed outside wartime necessity.

Faber of Magdeburg handled a considerable volume of regional Notgeld work during this period. The handstamp served as the primary security and authentication control, a thin safeguard but typical of the practical constraints facing small issuers with no access to intaglio facilities.