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500 Deutsche Mark
| Issuer | Deutsche Bundesbank |
|---|---|
| Year | 1960-1980 |
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| Size | 170 × 85 mm |
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| Obverse description | Brown-lilac on multicolour underprint. Central vignette of a male portrait by Hans Maler zu Schwaz, facing left, rendered in intaglio with fine guilloche work framing the composition. Denomination numerals and issuer inscriptions appear at left and right, with the date of issue printed below the central portrait. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | FÜNFHUNDERT DEUTSCHE MARK 500 Banknote 500 FÜNFHUNDERT DEUTSCHE MARK 500 DEUTSCHE BUNDESBANK Frankfurt am Main 1. Juni 1977 500 500 (Translation: Five hundred German Mark German Federal Bank) |
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| Comments |
The BBk I/Ia series — of which this note is a part — was printed continuously from 1960 through the early 1970s without date change, a deliberate Bundesbank policy meant to discourage hoarding and speculative withdrawal. The 500 Mark denomination was never a note of everyday commerce; German retail banks routinely kept them off the counter, and private citizens rarely encountered them in change. They circulated almost entirely within interbank settlement and large commercial transactions.
Eidenbenz, a Swiss graphic designer trained in Basel, brought a spare typographic discipline to the whole series that was unconventional for high-denomination European currency of the period. The Bundesdruckerei executed the intaglio work, but the aesthetic logic was genuinely his.