2.50 Mark Sparkasse

Insterburg — now Chernyakhovsk, Kaliningrad Oblast — was a prosperous East Prussian market town whose municipal savings bank issued this 2.50 Mark notgeld during the acute small-change crisis that gripped Germany from 1914 onward. The fractional denomination is characteristic of the first wave of emergency municipal issues, when coins vanished from circulation almost immediately after mobilization began.

Flemming-Wiskott of Glogau was a competent regional commercial printer, not one of the prestige security printers — their notgeld work is generally solid but unrefined. The serial number is the only security feature, which was entirely normal for low-value municipal issues of this type.