50 Pfennig

Züllichau — now Sulechów in western Poland — was a small Prussian market town whose municipal government issued this note in 1916 as part of the vast Notgeld wave that spread across Germany once the Allied naval blockade strangled the metal supply and drove copper, nickel, and eventually zinc coinage into hoarding. The signatory, Biehahn, held the position of Rendant at the Städtische Sparkasse — essentially the cashier-accountant responsible for the savings bank's books — an unusually junior institutional authority for a note issuer, reflecting how far down the administrative chain the coinage crisis had reached by mid-war.

Locally printed, almost certainly by a small regional press with limited typographic resources. Redemption was theoretically guaranteed by the town, though many such guarantees proved difficult to enforce as Germany's financial position deteriorated after 1917.