25 Pfennig

Güstrow's municipal administration issued this note under the emergency currency provisions that swept through German towns in 1918, as the Reichsbank's coin supply collapsed under wartime metal demands. The printer, Carl Michael'sche Hof- und Ratsbuchdruckerei, was a local press — the note never left the town's economic orbit in any meaningful sense, intended purely for small transactions among residents who had no alternative.

Güstrow Notgeld of this period is modestly collected but rarely exceptional. The 1918 municipal series predates the more elaborate and deliberately collectible Notgeld issues that flooded the market from 1920 onward, produced cynically for philatelic sale rather than actual need.