5 Mark

Geislingen an der Steige is a small industrial town in Württemberg, and like hundreds of German municipalities in 1918, its district office issued notgeld when the imperial monetary system buckled under wartime hoarding and metal shortages. This 5 Mark piece sits at the upper end of the denomination range for municipal emergency issues — most towns stayed well below that figure, making larger-denomination notgeld from small Amtskörperschaften relatively uncommon.

A. Mayer was a local printer, not a specialist security firm, which shows in these issues. Examine the paper carefully: counterfeiting of mid-to-high-denomination municipal notes was a documented problem in Württemberg during the final quarter of 1918.