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5 000 000 Mark Overprinted on 500 Mark
| Issuer | Stadthauptkasse Stralsund (City of Stralsund, Prussian province of Pomerania) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 5 000 000 Marks (5 000 000) |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Printer | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Green guilloche underprint with ornamental scroll border and four square corner rosettes. Central oval vignette bears the overprinted denomination "5000000 Mark" in heavy letterpress type over the original text. An official circular violet municipal stamp appears at lower left, with two manuscript signatures below the issuing authority text. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Stralsund Hansazeit um 1400 500 Mark SICILLVM·CIVITATIS·S·RALESSYNDIS (city seal legend) (Translation: Stralsund / Hanseatic period around 1400 / 500 marks / Seal of the city of Stralsund) |
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| Comments |
Stralsund's municipal treasury issued this note during the hyperinflationary collapse of 1923, when denominations became obsolete almost as soon as they were printed. The solution — overprinting an existing 500 Mark note with a value ten thousand times higher — was purely practical, driven by the impossibility of keeping local print runs ahead of the currency's daily devaluation.
F. Rackow was a Stralsund-based printer, meaning the overprint was applied locally rather than sourced from one of the large specialist firms handling emergency currency for bigger municipalities. That local provenance makes the physical execution uneven compared to centrally produced Notgeld of the same period.