1 Mark

Hofgeismar is a small town in northern Hesse, and its Kreissparkasse — a district savings bank — issued this 1 Mark note during the acute small-change crisis of 1922, when Reichsbank coin had been driven from circulation almost entirely by hoarding and rising metal values. Municipal and district bodies across Germany were printing their own Notgeld partly out of necessity, partly because the public demand was insatiable and the print runs were profitable.

Gebrüder Gotthelft in Cassel were among the more active regional printers servicing this Hessian notgeld wave. The DeNG reference covers four to five known varieties within this single type, suggesting multiple print runs or text variants across a relatively short issuing window.