25 Pfennig

Gladenbach is a small market town in Hesse, and like hundreds of German municipalities in 1920, it issued Kleingeldscheine — small-denomination emergency notes — to compensate for the severe shortage of circulating coinage that had plagued Germany since the war years. The Reichsbank's metal was long gone into the war economy, and by 1920 even the Weimar government's replacement coinage was failing to reach local commerce in sufficient quantities.

Municipal issues at this denomination were typically printed in short runs by regional printers and redeemed quickly, which is why even nominally common Notgeld pieces turn up in genuinely circulated condition far less often than collectors expect.