50 Pfennig

Rüstringen was a short-lived municipality — formed in 1919 from the merger of Wilhelmshaven's surrounding communities, it was absorbed into Wilhelmshaven itself in 1937. This Notgeld issue falls squarely within the hyperinflationary emergency currency wave that swept German municipalities between 1917 and 1923, when coin shortages and later monetary collapse forced local authorities to print their own small-denomination scrip.

The Stadtmagistrat — the city's administrative council — had no standing as a bank, which gives these notes their legally ambiguous character. Accepted locally by necessity, they carried no guarantee beyond the issuing authority's goodwill.