25 Pfennig

Remscheid's 1918 Notgeld issue arrived at a moment when small-denomination coinage had almost entirely vanished from German daily commerce — hoarded, melted, or simply unavailable as the war economy consumed metal. Municipal authorities across the Rhineland were left to paper over the gap themselves, literally. Remscheid, a steel and tool-manufacturing town in the Bergisches Land, would have felt that shortage acutely; its workers needed change for trams, canteens, and small purchases that no one could make without Pfennig-value instruments.

Oberbürgermeister Lohmann's signature lends the note its legal standing under local emergency authority rather than Reichsbank sanction.