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50 000 000 000 Mark
| Issuer | Stadt Altona (City of Altona) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
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| In circulation to | 1923 |
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| Obverse description | Blue letterpress on cream paper with a fine guilloche underprint across the entire face. The heading reads "Aushilfsschein der Stadt Altona" in Gothic script at top centre, with the large denomination "Fünfzig Milliarden Mark" in bold Fraktur as the central legend, accompanied by a small vignette of a building facade beneath. A diamond-shaped panel at left carries a vertical inscription of the denomination in Gothic lettering, and a serial number with asterisk appears vertically along the left margin. The lower portion carries a text clause, the date "Altona, den 25. Oktober 1923", the line "Namens der Stadt Altona", and four handwritten signatures above the printer's imprint. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Aushilfsschein der Stadt Altona Fünfzig Milliarden Mark Diesen Schein nehmen alle städtischen Kassen und in Altona befindlichen Banken in Zahlung Altona, den 25. Oktober 1923 Namens der Stadt Altona Fünfzig Milliarden Mark |
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| Comments |
Altona was at this point an independent Prussian city — it did not merge into Hamburg until 1937 — and like hundreds of German municipalities in late 1923, it was forced to issue its own emergency currency as the Reichsmark collapsed under hyperinflation. The fifty-billion-mark denomination tells you exactly where this note sits in that spiral: by October and November 1923, even these figures were becoming inadequate within days of printing.
B. Stöcks was a local Altona-Ottensen printer pressed into monetary service, not a specialist security printer. The absence of sophisticated anti-counterfeiting measures was largely irrelevant — the notes depreciated faster than forgery was worth attempting.