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500 Mark
| Issuer | Stadt Elberfeld (City of Elberfeld) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1922 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| In circulation to | 30 November 1922 |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Predominantly green and ochre reverse with four corner cartouches each bearing the numeral '500' in dark Gothic type on a green ground with fine guilloche borders. The central field, in a pale ochre tone, carries the large Fraktur legend 'Gut für Fünfhundert Mark' above the validity notice 'Gültig bis 30. November 1922'. A vertical right panel in green displays the serial number, the crowned lion heraldic vignette of Elberfeld, and the inscription 'Notgeld der Stadt Elberfeld' in bold Fraktur lettering. |
| Reverse lettering | Gut für Fünfhundert Mark Gültig bis 30. November 1922 No 28622 Notgeld der Stadt Elberfeld 500 |
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| Comments |
Elberfeld's municipal administration issued emergency currency — Notgeld — during the hyperinflationary spiral of the early Weimar Republic, when the Reichsbank simply could not keep pace with demand for circulating money. Stadt Elberfeld was an industrial city in the Wuppertal valley, a major center of the German dyestuffs and textile trade, which gave it both the municipal authority and the local commercial need to issue its own denominations at this scale.
J.H. Born was a local Elberfeld printer, not a specialist security press. That matters: these notes lack the intaglio printing and anti-counterfeiting sophistication of Reichsbank issues, making them straightforward products of civilian wartime commerce rather than monetary engineering. Elberfeld itself ceased to exist as an independent municipality in 1929, absorbed into the newly consolidated city of Wuppertal.