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500 000 000 Mark
| Issuer | Stadt Dresden (City of Dresden) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
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| Printer | Kunstanstalt Stengel & Co. G.m.b.H., Dresden, Germany |
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| Obverse description | Cream-toned notgeld voucher printed in dark brown with a fine guilloche border and ornamental corner rosettes. The denomination "500-000-000" appears in a rectangular panel at top centre, with the large Gothic-script legend "Fünfhundert Millionen Mark" dominating the centre field. The series letter "Reihe D" is printed in red at upper left, and the lower portion carries the date Dresden, den 12. September 1923, flanked by two embossed circular seal impressions, with dual signature lines for the Oberbürgermeister and Hauptkassendirektor. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Cream-toned reverse printed in dark brown, centred on a large diamond-shaped guilloche vignette with elaborate lace-pattern microwork surrounding the denomination "500 Millionen Mark" in Gothic script. A fine ornamental border frames the entire note, and vertical text panels appear at left and right margins containing the validity and anti-counterfeiting legal notices. The printer's imprint "Druck: Kunstanstalt Stengel & Co. G.m.b.H. Dresden" appears in small type at the lower right corner. |
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| Comments |
By the time Dresden issued this 500-million-mark note in 1923, the Reichsbank had effectively lost control of the money supply, and municipal authorities across Germany were printing their own emergency currency — Notgeld — just to meet payroll. Dresden's city administration contracted Stengel & Co., a firm better known for its commercial art printing and postcard reproduction work, which was a telling sign of how far the pool of available printing capacity had been stretched.
The denomination itself marks a specific window: late September or October 1923, when hyperinflation was accelerating fast enough that notes of this face value became obsolete within days of issue.