25 Pfennig Kaufmännischer Verein

Namslau — today Namysłów in southwestern Poland — was a small Silesian market town, and its Kaufmännischer Verein, a local merchants' association, issued this 25 Pfennig note in 1918 as Kleingeldersatz: emergency fractional currency to compensate for the near-total disappearance of coins from circulation. By that stage of the war, copper and nickel had been diverted so thoroughly into military production that small-denomination coinage had essentially ceased to function as a medium of exchange across much of Germany.

Merchant associations issuing their own notgeld were not unusual, but they occupy a distinct tier — below municipal authorities, above purely private scrip — and their notes were typically honored only within the local trading community that issued them.