25 Pfennig

Bad Kudowa — now Kudowa-Zdrój in southwestern Poland — was a spa town in Silesian Prussia whose municipality issued this note during the acute small-change shortage that paralyzed German retail commerce in the early 1920s. The Steinkopf firm in Stuttgart produced enormous volumes of Notgeld for municipalities across the Reich during this period, which makes their output technically consistent but rarely distinctive.

The issuer's identity matters here more than the printer's. Kudowa's economy ran almost entirely on health tourism, and its Kurnotgeld served a dual purpose: genuine emergency currency and a souvenir item sold to spa visitors, which is precisely why so many examples survived uncirculated.