5 Mark Sparkasse, linen issue

Bielefeld's Stadtsparkasse was one of several municipal institutions that turned to textile-based notgeld in 1921, when paper shortages and hyperinflationary pressure made conventional banknote stock impractical. The E. Gundlach printing house, based in Bielefeld itself, had the industrial weaving and printing connections to make linen issues viable locally — a rare convergence of printer and issuer in the same city that kept production costs and logistics manageable.

Linen notgeld degrades differently from paper: the fabric resists tearing but attracts soil along fold lines, and ink adhesion varies across the weave. Gra#16 is among the more frequently encountered of the Bielefeld textile issues, though genuinely uncirculated examples with clean fold intersections are not.