5 Mark Bork

Bork is a small village in Westphalia, and in August 1914 its savings and loan cooperative did what hundreds of similar rural institutions across Germany did simultaneously: issued its own emergency paper when coin vanished from circulation almost overnight at the outbreak of war. These hyper-local Notgeld issues were technically unauthorized but tolerated by authorities overwhelmed by the same problem at every level of the economy. Four signatories — two from the cooperative, two from the municipal administration — gave the note a veneer of dual institutional backing that was more symbolic than legally meaningful.

Survivorship is purely accidental with issues like this. Most were redeemed quickly and destroyed.