10 Rentenmark

The Rentenmark was not legal tender in the strict sense — it was backed by a mortgage lien on German agricultural and industrial land, a technically fictitious but politically necessary device introduced in November 1923 to replace the catastrophically inflated Papiermark. The Rentenbank had no gold reserve. The currency worked because the public believed it would, and that belief held.

The 10 Rentenmark denomination circulated well into the late 1920s alongside its successor, the Reichsmark, which was introduced in 1924. Both currencies remained valid simultaneously for years, an unusual dual-currency arrangement that caused persistent confusion in daily commerce.