5 Mark

Dresden's municipal administration began issuing Kleingeldscheine in 1916 as the wartime coin shortage strangled everyday retail transactions. By 1918, the city's Stadthauptkasse was authorizing notes at denominations substantial enough — five Mark being the upper practical limit for municipal emergency paper — that acceptance outside Dresden was never guaranteed. Legally, these were obligations of the city itself, not the Reichsbank, and redemption depended entirely on municipal solvency.

The Güntz'sche Stiftung press was a Dresden institution, a charitable printing foundation whose commercial contracts subsidized its philanthropic work. Using a local printer was both logistically sensible and politically legible to the population being asked to trust the paper.