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50 000 Mark
| Issuer | Stadtkasse Darmstadt (City Treasury of Darmstadt) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Mark (1914-1924) |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Printer | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Dark teal-blue letterpress border with the denomination '50 000 MARK' repeated along all four sides and the numeral '50000' running vertically on both lateral margins. The central panel, set against a pale guilloche underprint, carries the text in Gothic Fraktur script identifying this as Notgeld der Stadt Darmstadt for Fünfzigtausend Mark, followed by a promise of payment by the Stadtkasse Darmstadt upon presentation, an expiry clause, the date 'Darmstadt, 10. August 1923', and the title 'Der Oberbürgermeister' above a manuscript signature. A red serial number with asterisk is printed at lower left. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The reverse shares the same dark teal-blue letterpress border as the obverse, with '50 000 MARK' along the top and bottom edges and '50000' running vertically on the lateral margins. The central vignette, printed in dark blue-green on a pale guilloche background, presents a detailed architectural view of the Darmstadt Mathildenhöhe artists' colony complex, dominated by the tall Wedding Tower (Hochzeitsturm) with its distinctive stepped crown and clock, flanked by exhibition buildings and trees. The printer's imprint 'HEEDT & GANSS DARMSTADT' appears at the lower centre. |
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| Comments |
Darmstadt's Stadtkasse was among hundreds of German municipal treasuries forced into emergency currency production during the hyperinflationary spiral of 1923, when Reichsbank notes became obsolete faster than they could be printed. This 50,000 Mark denomination, enormous by prewar standards, was already a modest sum by mid-1923 — the Reichsmark reform that November eventually wiped the entire inflated mark series at one trillion to one.
Heedt u. Ganss were a local Darmstadt commercial printer, not a security printing house. That distinction mattered little by 1923; the velocity of inflation had stripped any meaningful counterfeiting incentive from the equation.