500 Mark Badische Bank

The Badische Bank was one of the privileged private note-issuing banks operating under Reich concession — a tier of institution that the Reichsbank repeatedly tried to absorb before finally succeeding in 1935. This 500 Mark denomination dates to the hyperinflation build-up of 1922, when the note's face value was already eroding faster than the paper could be printed and distributed.

Badische Bank printed locally in Mannheim rather than contracting out to the major Reich printing houses, which gives notes from this series minor but real typographic idiosyncrasies compared to contemporaneous Reichsbank issues.