5 Mark

Rudolstadt's 5 Mark notgeld from 1918 comes from one of the smaller German princely states — Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, a territory of roughly 940 square kilometers that had its own ruling house until Prince Günther Viktor abdicated in November 1918, just weeks after notes like this entered circulation. The timing matters: municipal notgeld of this type was issued precisely because the Imperial monetary system was collapsing under wartime strain, with metal coinage disappearing from circulation and the Reichsbank unable to supply adequate small-denomination paper to provincial towns.

The Stadtgemeinde, not the state treasury, bears the issuing authority here — a bureaucratic distinction that became legally significant when questions of redemption arose after the war.