20 Mark

Osterwieck's 1922 notgeld is among the more unusual pieces of the leather notgeld phenomenon that briefly swept small German municipalities during the hyperinflation crisis. While paper notgeld was ubiquitous, a handful of towns — mostly in the Harz region — issued pieces on tanned leather, partly as a deliberate collector's novelty to generate premium revenue for municipal coffers rather than from any genuine material necessity.

Ernst Zickfeld was a local Osterwieck printer, and the leather substrate would have been sourced and prepared separately before printing. Designer G.M. Hödel's involvement suggests this was treated as a commission piece, not a rushed emergency issue.