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500 000 Mark
| Issuer | Stadtkreis Eisenach (City of Eisenach), Thuringia |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
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| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Mark (1914-1924) |
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| Obverse description | Notgeld issued by the Stadtkreis Eisenach, printed in teal and black on cream paper with a fine guilloche border framing the entire note. The denomination 'Fünfhundert-Tausend Mark' is set in large blackletter Gothic type at centre, with a teal silhouette vignette of a crouching figure to the left and a numerical underprint reading '500000' at the lower left. The issue date 'Eisenach, am 17. August 1923' appears at centre, flanked by two manuscript signatures above their printed titles, with the serial number and series letter 'C' below. |
|---|---|
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| Signature(s) | Jauson (Oberbürgermeister / Der Stadtdirektor) and H. Kohlrausch (Vorsitzender / Der Stadtrat) |
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| Comments |
Eisenach issued this note under the Notgeld system at the height of the 1923 hyperinflation, when municipal authorities across Germany were legally permitted — indeed compelled by circumstance — to print their own emergency currency to keep local wages and commerce moving. Gebrüder Engelhardt, a printing firm based in Eisenach itself, produced the note locally, which was common for smaller cities that could not wait on overstretched national printers.
The half-million Mark denomination, staggering by any peacetime measure, was already losing value faster than it could be spent by the time notes like this reached circulation in mid-1923. Stabilization came in November with the introduction of the Rentenmark, after which virtually all Notgeld was withdrawn and destroyed — making surviving examples disproportionately scarce relative to the quantities originally printed.