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3 000 000 Mark on 1 000 Mark
| Issuer | Stadtkasse Berlin (Municipal Treasury of Berlin) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1922 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | The obverse of this Notgeld note is printed in brown and red tones on cream paper, with a geometric guilloche border of interlocking diamond and floral repeating patterns framing the entire face. To the left, the Berlin municipal coat of arms — the black bear — is rendered as a central vignette within a decorative panel, with circular cancel-style ornamental overprints. The denomination "EIN TAUSEND MARK" is set in large gothic letterpress type at centre, accompanied by the issuing authority text "Stadtkassenschein" and the place and date "BERLIN, den 11. Okt. 1922", with a manuscript facsimile signature below; a bold diagonal black overprint reading "Drei Millionen" revalues the note to 3 000 000 Mark. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse carries a detailed cartographic vignette occupying the full central field, showing a numbered district map of the Stadtgemeinde Berlin as constituted in 1922, with each of the twenty administrative Bezirke individually outlined and labelled, including Wedding, Spandau, Charlottenburg, Wilmersdorf, Steglitz, Neukölln, Lichtenberg, Köpenick and others. Statistical data in the upper-left panel records the city's population as 3 982 000 and its area as 87 974.61 hectares. An anti-counterfeiting warning legend runs along all four borders of the map panel. |
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| Comments |
The Berlin municipal treasury issued overprinted inflation notes as a stopgap when the Reichsbank's central supply of small-denomination paper simply could not keep pace with the velocity of price increases in late 1922. Printing new notes from scratch took time Germany did not have, so existing 1,000 Mark stock was rubber-stamped with multiplied values and pushed back into circulation — a bureaucratic improvisation that became common across German municipalities that year.
The 3,000,000 Mark overprint on a 1,000 Mark base reflects a tripling of face value by administrative fiat. Berlin's Stadtkasse was not unique in this, but as the capital's municipal cashier it operated at a scale that made even stopgap measures significant in volume.