25 Pfennig

The Städtischer Lebensmittelausschuss — the municipal food committee — was not a bank. It was a wartime rationing authority, and its decision to issue small-denomination Notgeld in 1918 reflects just how thoroughly the German financial system had fractured under the strain of the blockade years. Pfennig coinage had effectively vanished from circulation, hoarded or melted, forcing even administrative bodies with no monetary mandate to plug the gap.

Friedberg in Hessen was a modest garrison and market town; its food committee issuing scrip is entirely consistent with the chaotic patchwork of emergency money produced across Germany in that final war year.