20 Pfennig

Calau is a small town in Lower Lusatia, Brandenburg, and its district committee issued this note during the Kleingeldersatz crisis of 1919–1921, when a catastrophic shortage of low-denomination coinage forced hundreds of German municipalities to print their own fractional currency. The Reichsbank had effectively abandoned small change; local administrative bodies filled the gap with whatever printer was available.

Johannes Pässler of Dresden-Neustadt was a regional commercial printer, not a specialist security press — a common arrangement for notgeld of this type, where urgency mattered more than sophistication.