25 Pfennig

Stavenhagen is a small market town in Mecklenburg, best known as the birthplace of Fritz Reuter, the Low German dialect writer whose work was enormously popular in the nineteenth century. This 25 Pfennig Notgeld was issued in 1921 as Germany's postwar coin shortage dragged on well past the armistice — municipal authorities across the country had been filling the gap since 1916, and small towns like Stavenhagen were still at it years later.

The watermarked paper is worth noting: many Notgeld issues of this period used plain stock, so its presence here suggests a slightly more deliberate production than the rushed emergency printings of the earlier wartime issues.