2 Mark

Elbing's municipal savings bank issued this note in 1914 as emergency small change — the kind of locally authorized scrip that proliferated across German towns in the opening weeks of the First World War, when coin hoarding stripped retail commerce of its working currency almost overnight. The Reich government had not yet organized a centralized Kriegsgeld response, so institutions like the Städtische Sparkasse zu Elbing acted unilaterally, printing low-denomination notes to keep local markets functioning.

The cancellation holes are characteristic of notes that were withdrawn and officially invalidated once the emergency passed, though survivors in uncancelled state do exist within this series.