500 Mark

Remscheid was a Bergisches Land industrial town — steel tools, files, and hardware — and like hundreds of German municipalities in 1922, it was forced into emergency currency production as hyperinflation outpaced Reichsbank supply. This 500 Mark note was issued under the Notgeld framework that allowed cities and firms to print their own circulating paper, a system that briefly made local printers like W. Crüwell indispensable.

The designer credit to "Kusiku, Dortmund" is unusually specific for municipal Notgeld of this period and suggests a commissioned rather than stock design — worth noting when assessing whether the same plate appeared across other Crüwell-printed issues.