20 Pfennig Kleinkunstindustrie Carl Günther Tresselt

Großbreitenbach sits in the Ilm district of Thuringia, a region with a long tradition of small-scale craft industry — Kleinkunstindustrie literally — and this note was issued by a local commercial enterprise rather than a municipality or bank. The 1921 date places it squarely in the second wave of German Notgeld, when private businesses, not just towns, were producing emergency currency partly out of necessity and partly because the collector market had made it financially worthwhile to do so.

Paul Neu of Munich contributed designs to multiple Notgeld series during this period, and Carl O. Heyder in nearby Gehren was a regional printer who handled a number of Thuringian issues.