5 Rubli Magistrat Miasta Częstochowy

Częstochowa's municipal government issued this note under German occupation during World War I, when the withdrawal of Russian imperial currency and the disruption of normal monetary channels left Polish urban centers dangerously short of small-denomination tender. Local magistrates across occupied Congress Poland were effectively forced to print their own emergency scrip — a patchwork system tolerated, if not exactly sanctioned, by the occupying authorities.

W. Kohn, Aderfeld was a local Częstochowa printer, not a specialist security firm, and it shows. These notes were produced with minimal anti-counterfeiting measures and circulated among a population that had little alternative but to accept them.