20 Pfennig

Altona in 1921 was still an independent city under Prussian administration — it would not be absorbed into Hamburg until 1937. Its municipal government, the Magistrat, issued this Kleingeldersatz note during the severe small-change shortage that plagued German cities in the early Weimar period, when metal coins were being hoarded and inflation was beginning to erode public confidence in the currency. Municipal notgeld of this type was a purely local stopgap, legally valid only within the issuing jurisdiction.

Altona issues from this period are modestly collected but rarely remarkable. The 1921 series sits late in the notgeld wave — most of the decorative, collector-targeted emergency money had already peaked by mid-1921.