5 Mark

Traunstein's 5 Mark Notgeld from 1919 belongs to the wave of municipally issued emergency currency that flooded Bavaria and the rest of Germany following the collapse of the imperial monetary system. With central government authority fractured — this was the same year the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic rose and fell in Munich — local administrations printed their own obligations out of practical necessity, not monetary ambition.

The official stamp serving as the primary security feature is characteristic of hastily authorized local issues, where a rubber or wax impression from the municipal office substituted for sophisticated anti-counterfeiting measures. Traunstein was a small market town; production was almost certainly handled by a local printer with whatever stock was on hand.