20 Mark

Wolfenbüttel's Stadtmagistrat issued this note under the Kriegsgeld and early Notgeld arrangements that allowed German municipal authorities to supplement the badly strained Reichsbank supply during the final year of the war. The 20 Mark denomination sits at the upper end of what most town-level issuers attempted — most municipalities kept their emergency issues at 1 or 2 Mark to avoid friction with central banking authorities.

Brunswick's municipalities operated under a distinct administrative layer, the Freistaat Braunschweig, which gave local magistrates slightly more latitude than their Prussian counterparts. Whether that accounts for the relatively high face value is speculative, but it is at least a reasonable explanation.