10 Gulden Frankfurter Bank

The Frankfurter Bank was a private note-issuing institution founded in 1854, operating in the Free City of Frankfurt before its absorption into the Prussian-dominated German monetary union. This note dates from the bank's first full year of active operation. Frankfurt at mid-century was still an independent city-state and a major financial hub — home to the German Confederation's Federal Assembly and the Rothschild family's original banking house — which gave local private paper currency a credibility it lacked in more peripheral German states.

The bank lost its right to issue notes following the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, when Prussia annexed Frankfurt outright. Notes from the 1855 series had fewer than fifteen years of potential circulation before the institution was wound down entirely.