AN A TO Z OF BANKNOTES OF THE WORLD GERMANY

To find the earliest German paper money one has to look well back into the pre-unification era. Germany only became a single nation in 1871 but before then there was a multiplicity of states ranging from powerful Prussia in the north and east to much smaller micro-states based on the hereditary lands of a dizzying range of kings, princes, grand dukes, arch-dukes and plain dukes, not to mention the free Hanseatic ports of Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck. The extensive issues of the Germanspeaking lands that formed part of the Austro-Hungarian empire are not covered here.

Each state had its state bank or equivalent which issued notes in either Gulden or Thaler until the Mark was made Germany’s sole legal