50 Pfennig

Flatow — today Złotów in northwestern Poland — was an administrative district in West Prussia that issued this note during the final year of World War One, when the Reichsbank's small-denomination coinage had all but vanished from circulation. Hoarding and wartime metal requisitions had created a coin famine across Germany by 1917–1918, and hundreds of district and municipal authorities responded by printing their own Kleingeldersatz — substitute small change — under emergency authorization.

The Kreisausschuss, the elected district executive committee, was the typical issuing body at this administrative level. These notes were by design strictly local, theoretically redeemable only within the issuing district, which is why so many survived: shopkeepers and residents often held them past the redemption window rather than make the trip.