25 Pfennig

Melle is a small town in Lower Saxony, and like hundreds of German municipalities in 1921, it issued Kleingeldscheine — small-denomination emergency notes — to address the chronic shortage of fractional coinage that followed the First World War. The Reichsbank had effectively stopped supplying small change, leaving cities and towns to fend for themselves. This note is one of four or six variants in the series, differentiated by serial number color, reverse text, or minor typographic changes depending on which printing run.

Notgeld of this type was frequently collected rather than spent, and the Stadt Melle issues were no exception — many survive in better condition than their metropolitan counterparts.