40 Pfennig

Altona was still an independent Prussian city in 1921, not yet absorbed into Hamburg — that merger wouldn't come until 1937 under Nazi administrative reorganization. The Magistrat issued this note under the broader emergency money framework that flooded northern Germany after the war, when coin shortages made small-denomination paper a practical necessity rather than a monetary policy decision.

H.W. Köbner & Co. were local printers, and their production shows it — Altona's Notgeld series from this period is generally modest in execution compared to the more ambitious municipal issues coming out of central German towns at the same time.