Types / 1922
1 Mark, Bad Neuenahr A.-G. Bank-Abteilung, 1922 (am warmen Quell)
Scheck — Bad-Neuenahr A.-G., Bank-Abt.
What was happening
Not a municipal voucher but a private bearer cheque. Bad Neuenahr in the Ahr valley was a fashionable nineteenth-century spa, its waters marketed for diabetes and digestive complaints and its name tied to the Apollinaris mineral spring bottled commercially from the 1870s. The resort was run as a joint-stock company — the Bad-Neuenahr A.-G. — with its own Kurdirektion and bank department, and it was this bank department that printed the emergency money, in the form of Schecks drawn on its own account for the convenience of the Kurgäste rather than municipal notes drawn on a treasury.
The front carries the resort's eagle-and-"BN"-monogram arms and the undertaking Zahle gegen diesen Scheck aus unserm Guthaben an den Inhaber Mk. 1 — pay the bearer one mark from our balance — dated Neuenahr, 1 März 1922, valid until 31 December 1922, marked Reihe 1. The front is shared across the set; what distinguishes each Scheck is the coloured woodcut on the back, a little advertisement for the healing spring. This one, Reihe 1, Scheck 3, shows a nymph reclining at the steaming thermal spring beneath a castle-topped hillside, under the couplet Du siehst erstaunt, wie dampfend zischt am warmen Quell und drängt zum Licht — "you watch in wonder how, steaming and hissing, it rises at the warm spring and presses toward the light." Its companion is [[notgeld-bad-neuenahr-1-mark-zauberquell]]; see also the 2 Mark value, [[notgeld-bad-neuenahr-2-mark]].