5 Mark Norddeutsche Wollkämmerei

Notgeld issued by a wool-combing and worsted-spinning operation, not a bank. The Norddeutsche Wollkämmerei was one of the largest textile concerns in Imperial Germany, headquartered in Bremen-Blumenthal, and its Mühlhausen branch issued this note in 1914 as the mobilization crisis drained small-denomination coins from circulation almost overnight. Municipalities, factories, and cooperatives across Germany scrambled to fill the gap — this note belongs to that first wave of emergency issues, before any centralized framework existed for controlling or standardizing private Notgeld.

Textile firms were among the earliest private issuers precisely because they paid large workforces in regular weekly wages and could not function without small change.