1 Mark Stadtsparkasse

Bielefeld's municipal savings bank issued notgeld in 1918 as the German imperial monetary system buckled under wartime hoarding and metal shortages. The Stadtsparkasse was one of hundreds of local institutions authorized — sometimes informally — to plug the small-denomination gap left when pfennig coinage vanished from circulation almost entirely by mid-war.

E. Gundlach A.G. was a Bielefeld printing house, so the production chain here was entirely local, from issuer to press. Bielefeld would later become famous in notgeld circles for its 1921–1923 linen and leather emergency issues, but this 1918 paper mark is the more modest, functional precursor to that notoriety.