1 Rupie

By 1917, the German East Africa campaign under Lettow-Vorbeck had severed the colony from virtually all external supply lines. The Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Bank could no longer import properly printed banknotes, and the entire late-war series — including this 1 Rupie — was produced under field conditions using whatever materials were locally available. The paper itself was often sourced from within the colony, and the printing quality reflects those constraints.

These emergency issues circulated in a territory that was simultaneously a battlefield, making survivor notes genuinely scarce. The colonial rupie was pegged to the German mark but functioned in near-total isolation from that system by the time this note was issued.