5 Mark Exin

Exin — known today as Kcynia, in what is now north-central Poland — was a small Prussian market town with a substantial Polish-speaking population when it issued this note in 1918. German municipal authorities across the Posen province were scrambling to produce Kleingeldscheine to offset the chronic small-denomination coin shortage that plagued the Reich in the latter war years. The Magistrat here was no different.

What makes Exin's case notable is its timing: within weeks of the Armistice, the region became the flashpoint for the Greater Poland Uprising, and German administrative authority collapsed rapidly. Notes issued by the Magistrat in late 1918 had an exceptionally short operational window before the town passed to Polish control in January 1919.