5 Mark

Wenzel Hablik designed this note — an unusual choice. He was a Czech-born Expressionist painter and decorative artist based in Itzehoe, within Steinburg district itself, better known for utopian architectural fantasies and textile design than for banknote work. His involvement points to how improvisational Notgeld production could be: municipal committees in 1918 were sourcing designers locally, sometimes landing on genuinely talented people who had no prior experience with currency.

J.J. Augustin in Glückstadt was a long-established scholarly and regional printer — competent, but not a security printing house by trade. The watermarked paper was the primary concession to anti-counterfeiting.