20 Pfennig

Partenkirchen — not yet merged with Garmisch, that union wouldn't come until 1935 under pressure from the Nazi government ahead of the Winter Olympics — issued this Kleingeldersatz note through its Gemeinderat during the acute small-change shortage that plagued German municipalities in the early 1920s. The inflationary spiral had driven metal coins out of circulation entirely, hoarded or melted, leaving towns to improvise with locally printed paper in denominations that a national central bank would never have bothered with.

J. A. Schwarz of Lindenberg im Allgäu printed for numerous Allgäu communities during this period, and the reference grouping under DeNG 1048.1-1/6 suggests at least six distinguishable variants within this issue alone.