5 Rupien

By 1915, the naval blockade had severed German East Africa from Europe entirely, forcing the Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Bank to improvise with local resources. The Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Zeitung — a newspaper printing house — was pressed into emergency currency production, working with whatever paper stock was available. The results are visibly rough compared to pre-war issues, and the series is known for significant variation in paper quality and ink consistency across individual notes.

Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck's *Schutztruppe* campaign kept the colony fighting until after the Armistice, meaning these notes remained nominally in use longer than almost any other German colonial currency.