5 000 000 Mark Brückenbau Flender

Brückenbau Flender A.-G. was a Lübeck-based steel construction firm — bridge-builders, not bankers — that found itself issuing emergency currency during the catastrophic inflation of 1923. At the five-million mark denomination, this note was already obsolescent within days of printing; the Reichsmark reform in November 1923 rendered the entire notgeld system worthless overnight. Max Schmidt was a local Lübeck printer with no particular prestige in the notgeld world, which makes the inclusion of a watermark here a minor surprise — most industrial-issuer emergency notes of this period dispensed with security features entirely.