25 Pfennig

Saarlouis notgeld from this period sits in an awkward political moment. The city was still German when these emergency notes were authorized, but the Versailles Treaty in June 1919 placed the Saar territory under League of Nations administration, effective January 1920 — meaning notes issued toward the end of this window circulated under a fundamentally different governing authority than the one that signed them.

Bürgermeister S. Gilles signed through the transition. Whether his signature carried the same municipal authority in 1920 as it did in 1918 is a legitimate question with no clean answer.