Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
5 000 000 Mark
| Issuer | Stadt Durlach (City of Durlach) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
| Type | Local banknote |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Salmon-tinted notgeld on plain paper stock with a serrated guilloche border enclosing the full face. The civic arms of Durlach appear within an ornate cartouche surmounted by a cherub's head at upper left, while the upper centre is occupied by a large panoramic vignette of Durlach as recorded by Merian in 1643, with a numbered legend key identifying ten landmarks. The denomination is set in bold Gothic blackletter script below the vignette, with the issuing authority text and date arranged in a vertical column along the right margin, signed by the Oberbürgermeister. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Entirely blank reverse in off-white paper stock, with faint offset impressions of the obverse design visible through the paper; manuscript arithmetic notations added in ink by a later hand are present. |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
Durlach was absorbed into Karlsruhe as a district in 1938, but in 1923 it still functioned as an independent municipality with its own administration — and, like hundreds of German towns that summer, with its own emergency currency. This note belongs to the Notgeld wave of the hyperinflation peak, when the Reichsbank's printing capacity simply could not keep pace with collapsing purchasing power. Municipal and commercial issuers filled the gap.
Five million marks sounds extraordinary; by late 1923 it barely covered a loaf of bread. Notes like this were often printed locally on whatever stock was available, which is why paper quality varies so sharply within the same series.