50 Mark

The Reichs-Schulden-Verwaltung was not a central bank but a debt management office — an unusual choice of issuing authority that reflects the provisional, almost improvised nature of Germany's early post-unification monetary administration. The Reich had no central bank until the Reichsbank was established in 1876, so these Reichskassenscheine were issued through the treasury bureaucracy instead.

Gustav Eilers was one of the principal engravers at the Reichsdruckerei and contributed to several of the early Reich note designs. The printer attribution requires a small caveat: the Reichsdruckerei name wasn't formally adopted until 1879, five years after this note's issue date, when it was still operating under an earlier designation.