500 000 Mark Stadtsparkasse

Bielefeld's Stadtsparkasse was among the more inventive municipal issuers during the 1923 hyperinflation, and this note is part of a series for which the city became genuinely famous — not for the paper issues, but for the linen and silk Notgeld issued concurrently, a gimmick that attracted international collector attention almost immediately. The paper series, printed locally by E. Gundlach, was purely functional by comparison: emergency municipal scrip to keep commerce moving as Reichsbank notes became worthless faster than they could be printed.

By the time 500,000 Mark denominations were necessary, the inflation had roughly six weeks left before the Rentenmark stabilization of November 1923.