1 Mark

Dinslaken's 1914 emergency issue belongs to the first wave of German municipal notgeld, triggered by the hoarding of coin that swept the country within weeks of mobilization in August 1914. Metal vanished from circulation almost overnight, and hundreds of cities scrambled to print substitutes before any central framework existed to authorize or regulate them. Gebrüder Parcus in Munich handled a considerable volume of this early municipal work — they were an established commercial printer, not a specialist security house, which is exactly why authentication fell to the local official stamp and Saelmans' signature rather than any intrinsic printing security.