25 Pfennig

Auma is a small textile-manufacturing town in the Greiz district of Thuringia, and this 25 Pfennig notgeld was issued during the acute coin shortage that gripped Germany in 1921 as postwar inflation began eroding the purchasing power of metal. Municipal notgeld of this period was technically illegal under Reichsbank regulations but tolerated out of necessity — local governments, merchants, and even private firms filled the gap the central authorities could not.

The watermarked paper is notable for a piece of this denomination and scale; most Kleingeldscheine of comparable size from smaller Thuringian municipalities were printed on plain stock.