5 Mark

Issued as Notgeld — emergency municipal currency — by the combined administrative districts of Bonn and the Siegkreis, this note reflects the severe coin shortage that gripped Germany during and immediately after the First World War. The Dumont Schauberg printing house in Cologne, better known as a newspaper publisher (the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger was their flagship), was pressed into banknote production precisely because specialist security printers were overwhelmed by wartime demand.

The Siegkreis connection is worth noting: the joint issuance across two distinct administrative units was an administrative workaround, not standard procedure.