Schuldverfchreibung der Stadt Mainz - 1922 dated German 5,000 Mark Bond
Inv# FB6733 Bond
5,000 5% Mark Bond.
The Anleihe des Deutschen Reichs Schuldverschreibung denotes historical government debt certificates issued by the German Reich during turbulent eras, especially the Weimar Republic in the early 1920s. The term Anleihe means loan or bond, while Schuldverschreibung refers to a debt certificate or promissory note. During the hyperinflation crisis of the early 1920s, the government issued high-denomination bonds—such as 10,000, 50,000, and 100,000 Mark—to address growing fiscal pressures. These certificates commonly included interest coupons (Zinsscheine) and renewal stubs (Erneuerungsscheine), forming a standard financial tool that was eventually overwhelmed by the rapid devaluation of the Mark.
Today, these paper certificates remain largely as historical artifacts and collector items rather than active financial instruments. Administrative oversight of older German public debt stems from bodies like the Reich Debt Administration (Reichsschuldenverwaltung), whose roles shifted through postwar reorganizations into modern agencies. Established in 1871 after the German Empire unified, the Reich Debt Administration (Reichsschuldenverwaltung) drew its structure from the Prussian Main Administration of the State Debt (Preußische Hauptverwaltung der Staatsschulden), which began in 1820. Based in Berlin, this key body converted older regional loans into the new German Mark and handled the Empire’s rising public debt under the nominal direction of the Reich Chancellor. Formally titled the Reichsschuldenverwaltung in the first Reich Debt Ordinance of 1900, the agency held the rare legal power to issue sovereign paper money, including Imperial Treasury Notes (Reichskassenscheine), apart from the standard Reichsbank system. Through World War I and the Weimar Republic, it tried to manage severe monetary shifts by arranging large war bonds and issuing wartime loan-currency notes (Darlehenskassenscheine) until the 1923 hyperinflation made its special note functions useless.
The agency entered a turbulent period after the 1933 Nazi rise to power, which broke its legal independence. The Third Reich removed autonomous oversight, moving direct loan approvals to the central Reich government to secretly fund large military rearmament and deficit spending. Longtime director Ernst Articus, who led the institution from 1929 to 1944, eventually enabled the regime’s unilateral default on international debts and the release of heavily weaponized wartime treasury bonds. In 1945, during the fall of Berlin, most historic files were lost. After a short post-war period under the Allied Military Command, the agency’s structure was absorbed into the United Economic Area. It was reorganized as the West German Federal Debt Administration (Bundesschuldenverwaltung) in 1949, preserving its basic administrative methods until it merged into the modern German Finance Agency (Finanzagentur GmbH) in 2006.
A bond is a document of title for a loan. Bonds are issued, not only by businesses, but also by national, state or city governments, or other public bodies, or sometimes by individuals. Bonds are a loan to the company or other body. They are normally repayable within a stated period of time. Bonds earn interest at a fixed rate, which must usually be paid by the undertaking regardless of its financial results. A bondholder is a creditor of the undertaking.
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