500 000 Mark Atlas Werke

Atlas Werke AG was a Bremen-based shipbuilding and marine engineering firm, and like thousands of German industrial companies in the summer and autumn of 1923, it issued its own emergency currency — Notgeld — to pay workers when Reichsbank notes became worthless faster than they could be printed. At the 500,000 Mark level, this note was already obsolete within weeks of issue; by November 1923 the denomination would have been laughably small against the hyperinflationary peak.

H.M. Hauschild was a Bremen printer that handled a significant volume of local Notgeld commissions during this period. The note's regional specificity — a major industrial issuer, a local press — is exactly what makes firm-issue Notgeld from this phase more historically grounded than the decorative municipal issues that preceded it.