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5 000 000 000 Mark Philippsburg

Issuer Stadtgemeinde Philippsburg
Year 1923
Type Local banknote
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Obverse description The obverse is printed in black on a fine guilloche underprint, enclosed within an ornate scrollwork border with foliate corner motifs. The denomination "Fünf Milliarden Mark" is set in large blackletter type across the centre, above which a small municipal coat of arms vignette printed in brown appears within the guilloche field, flanked by the serial number and the heading "Notgeld Nr.". The diagonal marginal overprint "fünf milliarden" repeats in brown along both vertical edges, and a manuscript signature of the Gemeinderat appears below the payment text dated 27 October 1923.
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Reverse description The reverse carries a large brown intaglio-style vignette drawn from a 17th-century allegorical composition, showing a crowned lion holding a musket and resting on an anchor amid a panoramic landscape with a distant view of Philippsburg. Three oval cartouches bearing heraldic devices are arranged across the upper field, and a smaller allegorical figure reclines in the lower left foreground. Inscriptions in Latin and German run vertically along both side margins, with the caption "Philippsburg im Jahre 1676" printed below the central vignette.
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Comments

Philippsburg, a small town on the Rhine in Baden, was among hundreds of German municipalities that issued emergency currency during the hyperinflation peak of autumn 1923. By the time denominations reached the billion-mark range, the Reichsbank's printing capacity could not keep pace with the devaluation cycle, forcing local authorities — Stadtgemeinden, district offices, even private firms — to produce their own notgeld simply to meet payroll and daily commerce.

The five-billion figure on this note places it squarely in October or November 1923, the final weeks before the Rentenmark stabilization on 15 November effectively ended the crisis. Notes issued this late often had circulation lives measured in days.

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