10 000 Mark

Ahrweiler's Kreisausschuss — the district committee — issued this note under the emergency currency provisions that allowed German municipalities and administrative districts to print their own money during the hyperinflation of 1923. Eduard Kirfel was a local printer, not a specialist banknote house, and the embossed seal substitutes for the kind of intaglio security that a proper note would carry. Five signatures were required for authorization, which was not unusual for district-level Notgeld of this period — the more signatories, the harder to forge a valid instrument without inside access.