5 Mark

Kulmbach's municipal authority issued this note amid the acute coin shortage that gripped Germany in the final year of the First World War. The Stadtmagistrat — the town magistracy — was one of thousands of local bodies across Germany and Austria that stepped into the vacuum left by the disappearance of metal coinage from circulation, producing Notgeld that was technically redeemable but practically unavoidable for daily transactions.

Printed locally by Richard Rehm, the town's own commercial press. The official stamp serves as the primary authentication device, a common expedient when security printing was neither available nor affordable to small municipalities.