1 Mark

Gebesee is a small town in Thuringia — population well under two thousand even today — which makes this 1921 Notgeld issue a fairly minor entry in what was, by that point, an enormous and somewhat chaotic flood of municipal emergency currency across Germany. The postwar inflation had made Reichsmark coinage effectively disappear from everyday transactions by hoarding and melting, forcing even obscure municipalities to print their own fractional substitutes.

Kirchner's Erfurt shop handled a significant volume of Thuringian Notgeld printing during this period. Designer A. Hanf was also Erfurt-based, a local commercial arrangement typical of small-town issues that lacked the budget for Berlin or Leipzig printers.