25 Pfennig

Rostock's 1922 Notgeld series was issued as the Weimar hyperinflation cycle began accelerating beyond what the Reichsbank could practically service in small denominations. Municipal and local authorities across Germany flooded the economy with emergency issues precisely because coin shortages and inflationary pressure made official small change functionally useless. Rostock, as a major Baltic port city, had both the civic infrastructure and the commercial incentive to issue its own.

The 25 Pfennig denomination places this squarely in the transitional phase — modest enough to address everyday transaction gaps, yet already being rendered obsolete by the pace of price increases that would make the entire Notgeld system unworkable within months.