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½ Million Mark
| Issuer | Stadt Unna (Magistrat) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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| Obverse description | Pink paper with green guilloche underprint. Central circular vignette depicts a medieval castle with multiple towers in letterpress. Denomination "1/2 Million Mark" printed in Gothic script at left and right, with issuer name "Stadt Unna i. W." along the lower margin. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Pink paper with green guilloche underprint overall. Denomination and issuer inscriptions in Gothic script, with "Notgeld" repeated and a central circular seal of the Stadt Unna i. W., all printed in dark red on the patterned ground. |
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| Comments |
Unna's half-million Mark note arrived in the summer of 1923, when German municipal authorities were scrambling to print emergency money fast enough to keep pace with hyperinflation that was, by then, doubling prices within days. The Magistrat — the town's civic executive body — had legal authority to issue Notgeld, and local printers like Georg Erhard were pressed into service printing denominations that would have been unthinkable eighteen months earlier.
Erhard was a local commercial printer, not a specialist security printer, which shows in the production. The signatures of Krieger and Wollerjan authenticate the issue as municipal obligations rather than central bank instruments — by this point a largely symbolic distinction.