50 Pfennigs

Freienohl is a small village on the Ruhr river in the Sauerland, and like hundreds of other German municipalities it resorted to printing its own Notgeld during the severe small-change shortage that gripped Germany from 1916 onward. The Gemeindekasse — the municipal cashier's office — acted as the issuing authority in the absence of any local banking infrastructure capable of managing even a modest emergency emission.

These hyperlocal issues were typically redeemable only within the issuing community, which kept circulation geographically contained and redemption rates high. Survivors tend to come from collector hoards assembled during the Notgeld collecting craze of the early 1920s, not from actual pocket wear.