25 Pfennige

Nikolai — now Mikołów in southern Poland — was a small Upper Silesian town caught between German administration and a mixed Polish-German population that would soon be at the center of the 1921 plebiscite crisis. This note predates that upheaval by three years, issued under wartime small-change shortages that had drained silver and copper from everyday commerce across the Reich. Local magistrates across Germany were empowered to fill the gap with Notgeld, and Nikolai's administration contracted the job to Joh. Miarka, a local printer whose name is itself historically loaded — Johann Miarka was a prominent figure in Polish cultural life in Upper Silesia in the previous century.