10 Rupien

This note was produced under siege conditions. By 1916, the British naval blockade had cut German East Africa off from virtually all external supply, and the Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Bank had exhausted its imported banknote stock. The colony's administration turned to the Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Zeitung — a newspaper print shop — to produce emergency currency, using whatever paper was locally available. Some notes from this series were printed on interleaving paper, packing material, or whatever stock the press had on hand.

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck's guerrilla campaign kept the colony fighting until November 1918, two weeks after the Armistice in Europe. These notes circulated among a shrinking, increasingly isolated population for longer than anyone in 1916 anticipated.