We usually remember the interwar German inflation in its critical phase — the hyperinflation that lasted from 1922 to 1923. In fact, the mark had started its decline in 1914, when the imperial government began printing money to pay for World War I. A parallel shortage of small change occurred at the same time, as the anxious populace hoarded coins and the government withdrew them from circulation for their metallic content. To make up for this shortage, businesses and municipalities printed small-denomination tokens known as “notgeld,” or emergency money. By the standards of normal currency, these were very odd: they could only be redeemed in their place of issue, and they usually had a limited term of validity. They looked strange, too, and they grew even stranger as issuers realized they could be sold to collectors and competed for the attention of this market with increasingly bizarre imagery. Some town halls raised substantial sums this way, but the proliferation of currencies only made the economic chaos worse. Meanwhile, on these tiny canvases, the cultural and political tensions of inflation played out before a popular audience.