25 Pfennigs

Schnelsen was a rural parish northwest of Hamburg, administratively part of the Amt Pinneberg in the Prussian Province of Schleswig-Holstein. This note belongs to the vast wave of Kleingeldersatz — small-change substitutes — issued by German municipalities during the coin shortage that followed the First World War. By 1921, the national government had effectively abandoned its obligation to keep fractional coinage in circulation, leaving thousands of local authorities to print their own.

Pinneberg district alone produced dozens of distinct issuing authorities at this level. Schnelsen itself was absorbed into Hamburg in 1938 as part of the Greater Hamburg Act, which makes this note one of the last artifacts of its brief existence as an independent administrative unit.