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500 000 Mark
| Issuer | Stadt Wiesdorf (City of Wiesdorf) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | 150 x 95 mm |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Stadt Wiesdorf Fünfhunderttausend Mark 500 000 zahlt die Stadt Wiesdorf gegen diesen Schein. Er verliert seine Gültigkeit nach vorheriger Bekanntmachung in den Ortsblättern. Wiesdorf, 1. August 1923. Der Bürgermeister: (Translation: City of Wiesdorf Five hundred thousand Marks 500,000 The city of Wiesdorf pays against this note. It loses its validity after prior announcement in the local newspapers. Wiesdorf, August 1, 1923. The Mayor:) |
| Reverse description | Printed in grey on plain paper, the reverse centres on the Wiesdorf municipal coat of arms — a divided shield bearing a lion passant above a river barge — set within a large radiating guilloche rosette flanked by two smaller rosettes. The denomination "500 000" appears in all four corners. |
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| Comments |
Wiesdorf was a small industrial municipality on the Rhine, best known as the home of Bayer's main chemical works. By 1923, German cities and towns were issuing their own emergency currency — Notgeld — not as novelties but out of necessity, as the Reichsbank simply could not print and distribute enough physical notes to keep pace with hyperinflation accelerating weekly. A 500,000 Mark denomination, unthinkable two years earlier, was routine by mid-1923 and nearly worthless by autumn.
M. DuMont Schauberg in Köln was a well-established commercial printer that handled Notgeld for numerous Rhineland municipalities during this period, which kept production quality reasonably consistent even under chaotic economic conditions. Wiesdorf itself was absorbed into the newly created city of Leverkusen in 1930.