75 Pfennigs

Wünschendorf an der Elster is a small community in Thuringia, and this 75 Pfennig note is a product of the Kleingeldschein phenomenon that swept German municipalities between 1919 and 1922 — a period when chronic small-coin shortages forced thousands of local authorities to print their own emergency fractional currency. The Reichsbank had been unable to keep low-denomination coinage in circulation; metal had been hoarded or absorbed by wartime demands, and the gap was filled by an estimated 100,000-plus local issues of wildly varying quality and design ambition.

The single authorizing signature belongs to Schimmel, listed as Gemeindevorstand — the head of the municipal board. These hyperlocal issues were legally tenuous from the start, and most were withdrawn and redeemed within months once Reichsbank policy shifted in 1922.