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5 000 000 Mark
| Issuer | Stadt Wattenscheid (City of Wattenscheid) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 5 000 000 Mark (5 000 000) |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Notgeld der Stadt Wattenscheid Die Stadt Wattenscheid zahlt dem Einlieferer dieses Scheines Fünf Millionen Mk. Der Termin der Einlösung wird öffentlich bekannt gemacht. Wattenscheid, den 1. Septbr. 1923 Der Bürgermeister: |
| Reverse description | Printed in violet-purple on plain paper, the reverse carries a dense guilloche underprint divided into rectangular panels, with the denomination numeral '5 000 000' repeated in each of the four corners in diagonal Fraktur type. A central circular guilloche medallion is overlaid with the large bold Gothic inscription 'Fünf Millionen Mark' in three lines, with '5 000 000' set above it. The issuer name 'Stadt Wattenscheid' appears in a single line of Fraktur at the top centre. |
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| Comments |
Wattenscheid's five-million-mark note belongs to the most chaotic phase of Weimar hyperinflation — by mid-1923, municipal and regional authorities across Germany were printing their own emergency currency, Notgeld, because Reichsbank notes were being rendered worthless faster than they could be shipped. Cities like Wattenscheid had no practical choice but to issue local denominations to keep commerce moving at all, even knowing those notes might be obsolete within weeks.
The Ruhr occupation by French and Belgian forces beginning in January 1923 hit industrial towns in the region particularly hard, and Wattenscheid — a coal-mining municipality between Bochum and Gelsenkirchen — was squarely in that zone. Passive resistance, supply disruption, and economic paralysis accelerated the local need for supplementary currency well beyond what even Berlin anticipated.
By November 1923, the Rentenmark reform made virtually all such municipal issues worthless overnight.