10 Pfennig

The Swakopmunder Buchhandlung — a bookshop and stationery business in Swakopmund — issued this linen notgeld during the South African occupation of German South West Africa, after the German colonial administration surrendered in July 1915. With the territory under military rule and small change in chronic short supply, local merchants were left to improvise. A bookshop printing its own currency on linen cloth is not the most unlikely outcome of that situation, but it remains one of the more striking.

Linen issues from this occupation period are inherently fragile survivors; the material does not tolerate handling the way paper does.