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5 Mark
| Issuer | Stadt Cöln (City of Cologne) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1918 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Plain pale paper with a continuous wave-pattern guilloche underprint in blue. The four corners each carry the bold numeral "5", and the centre is dominated by a large ghost watermark-style numeral "5" in the underprint. Above, the issuer and date "Stadt Cöln 1918" are set in Fraktur type, followed by "Gutschein über" in a smaller roman hand, with the denomination "Fünf Mark" in large decorative Fraktur lettering below, the whole composition unadorned save for the intricate engine-turned background. |
| Reverse lettering | Stadt Cöln 1918 Gutschein über Fünf Mark |
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| Comments |
Cologne issued its own emergency currency — Notgeld — in 1918 as the imperial economy collapsed and small-denomination coinage disappeared from circulation entirely. The signature here belongs to Konrad Adenauer, then serving as Oberbürgermeister of Cologne, a position he had held since 1917 and would continue to hold until forcibly removed by the Nazis in 1933. He was, of course, later Federal Chancellor — which makes signed municipal scrip from this period a document that attracts collectors far outside the usual Notgeld field.
J. P. Bachem was a Cologne-based Catholic publishing house, not a specialist security printer. That origin shows in some examples.