10 Mark

Berchtesgaden's district administration issued this note during the turbulent spring of 1919, when Bavaria briefly fell under the Räterepublik — the short-lived Soviet-style council republic declared in Munich in April. Local emergency currencies proliferated across Bavaria as the central banking system buckled and trade ground to a halt. Whether this particular note was issued before, during, or immediately after the Räterepublik's violent suppression in early May is difficult to pin down precisely, but the timing places it squarely inside one of the most chaotic episodes in Weimar-era German regional history.

L. Vonderthann & Sohn was a local Berchtesgaden printer — the official stamp substitutes for the security printing that a larger operation might have provided.