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5 Mark
| Issuer | Stadt Konstanz (City of Konstanz) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1918 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | Grey-toned letterpress note with an all-over underprint of repeating Konstanz civic coat-of-arms vignettes arranged in a dense tiled pattern across the entire field. The title inscription in heavy Gothic blackletter runs across the upper portion, flanked by a handwritten serial number at upper right, while the large denomination numeral '5' appears at lower left and lower right. Central text block carries validity and payment clauses in Roman type, followed by the place-and-date line and the issuing authority legend, beneath which a manuscript signature appears. A vertical red cancel overprint is visible along the right margin. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | Fünf Mark KRIEGSNOTGELD DER STADT KONSTANZ. |
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| Comments |
Konstanz occupies a peculiar position in German municipal emergency money: it sits on the Swiss border, and by 1918 the city was acutely aware of the franc's stability relative to the collapsing purchasing power of the mark. Stadt Konstanz issued this Notgeld as a stopgap against the chronic small-denomination coin shortage that had plagued German civilian life since roughly 1916, when metal coinage was systematically withdrawn for war industry use.
Five mark is toward the upper end of typical municipal Notgeld denominations — most cities stayed at one or two. That this note was printed locally rather than contracted to a specialist printer is consistent with the improvised character of the whole series.