25 Pfennig

Lübbecke is a small market town in Westphalia, and its municipal authority issued this Notgeld note during the acute small-denomination coin shortage that followed the First World War. German hoarding of metal coinage left everyday commerce effectively paralyzed at street level, and thousands of local authorities — cities, counties, cooperatives, even individual firms — stepped in to fill the gap with emergency paper. The Magistrat's notes circulated locally and were theoretically redeemable, though in practice many were absorbed by collectors almost immediately.

The dual signatures of Rütz and Blase represent the municipal countersignatures required to validate issue — a bureaucratic safeguard that varied considerably between issuing bodies.