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500 000 Mark
| Issuer | Stadt Blaubeuren (City of Blaubeuren) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | Printed in brown on cream paper with an ornate geometric guilloche border running the full perimeter of the note. To the left, a rectangular vignette renders a detailed letterpress view of the Blaubeuren monastery church (Kloster Blaubeuren) set among trees, with the denomination '500,000 Mark' inscribed below it. The right half carries the issuer's name in Gothic blackletter script at the top, followed by the denomination 'Fünfhunderttausend Mark' in large display lettering, the payment obligation text, validity date, and two manuscript signature lines above a counterfeit warning, with a faint oval underprint stamp visible in the centre. |
|---|---|
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| Signature(s) | Dorn and Klotz |
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| Comments |
Blaubeuren was a small Swabian town of perhaps four thousand people when it issued this note in 1923. Like hundreds of German municipalities during the hyperinflation peak, it had no realistic alternative — Reichsbank currency was depreciating faster than it could be physically transported and distributed, forcing local authorities to print emergency Notgeld simply to keep daily commerce functioning. A half-million marks, a sum that would have seemed grotesque three years earlier, was by mid-1923 roughly the cost of a loaf of bread.
Dr. Karl Höhn was a local printer, not a specialist banknote firm. The signatures of Dorn and Klotz represent municipal officials countersigning under emergency authorization.