25 Pfennig Kreissparkasse

Kreissparkasse Oberbarnim was the district savings institution for the Oberbarnim administrative district in Brandenburg, with Freienwalde an der Oder serving as the issuing office. This note belongs to the great wave of German municipal and institutional Notgeld — emergency small-change scrip — that flooded the country between 1920 and 1922 as coin disappeared from circulation and the Reichsbank struggled to keep pace with inflationary demand. Aug. Arendt was a local Eberswalde printer, not a specialist banknote firm, which accounts for the modest production quality typical of district-level Notgeld from Brandenburg.