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5 000 000 Mark
| Issuer | Stadtgemeinde Annweiler (Municipality of Annweiler) |
|---|---|
| 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 | The obverse is divided into two panels within a decorative ruled border with ornamental corner devices. The left panel carries the circular city seal of Annweiler with a ribbon-draped flagpole and the jubilee inscription below; the right panel presents a fine letterpress vignette of a medieval stone bridge and mill scene in olive-green underprint, over which the denomination 'Fünf Millionen Mark' is printed in bold Gothic type. A serial number cartouche is set between two horizontal inscription lines referencing the granting of city rights on 14 September 1219, with the issue date 14 September 1923 and signature lines for the Bürgermeister and the Stadteinnehmer below, each bearing a handwritten signature in ink. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The reverse bears a full-width engraved vignette in dark brown-black ink, executed in a detailed line-engraving style signed by the artist F. Mannheim. The central composition shows the ruined Romanesque gateway arch and ashlar walls of Burg Trifels, with the three castle-crowned hilltops of the Annweiler massif receding into a hatched sky in the right background. To the right of the vignette, a calligraphic quotation in Gothic script is attributed to the poet Scheffel, with the denomination 'Fünf Millionen Mark' set in bold serif type along the lower margin within the decorative border. |
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| Comments |
Annweiler am Trifels is a small town in the Palatinate — the kind of place that under ordinary circumstances would never have needed to print its own money. The hyperinflation of 1923 changed that. As the Reichsbank struggled to keep pace with denominations that doubled and redoubled within weeks, local municipalities across Germany were authorized to issue Notgeld to fill the transactional gap. Annweiler's five-million-mark note belongs to that frantic summer and autumn window when a loaf of bread could cost more than the entire prewar German national debt.
Municipal issues from small Palatinate towns were typically printed by local commercial printers with limited typographic resources, which shows.