50 Pfennig

Städtischer Lebensmittelausschuss — the Municipal Food Committee — was not a bank, a treasury, or a military authority. It was a wartime rationing body, and the fact that such an institution was issuing currency by 1917 tells you something specific about how thoroughly Germany's domestic economy had fractured under four years of blockade and mobilization. These Kriegsgeld notes were a local patch on a collapsing system of small-change supply, not an official monetary instrument.

The watermarked paper is worth noting — many comparable municipal issues of this period used whatever stock was available, with no security features whatsoever. That Friedberg's food committee sourced watermarked paper suggests at least some coordination with a commercial printer operating to a modest standard.