100 Deutsche Mark

The BBk I/BBk Ia series, of which this note is part, was the Bundesbank's first fully independent issue — the earlier 1948 and 1960 transitional notes still carried design elements rooted in Allied occupation-era policy. Eidenbenz, a Swiss graphic designer trained in the Basel tradition, brought a rigorous typographic discipline to the series that was deliberately modern and deliberately German in the post-reconstruction sense: functional, unornamented, legible.

The Bundesdruckerei's intaglio work on this series is among the finest produced in postwar Europe. Notes from the later printings within the 1960–1980 span can be distinguished from early ones by subtle shifts in ink saturation and serial prefix blocks — a useful point when authenticating.