Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
1 000 000 Ruhrtaler Propaganda banknotes
| Issuer | |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | 122 x 88 mm |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | "The uniformly designed front features a standing woman, Marianne, the national figure of the French Republic, in the left third of the notes. In her right hand she holds a whip and in her left a number of banknotes. She placed her right foot on the neck of a man lying on the ground. This representation can first of all be interpreted as the defenselessness of the German Empire against the arbitrary power of the Franco-Belgian armed forces." Text from www.geldscheine-online.com |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | "In the left picture, the occupiers' wish that a French soldier with a bayonet forces the miner to push a cart full of coal, while the latter in the right picture, standing with one hand in his pocket and pointing contemptuously at the soldier with the other hand, is comfortably chatting with another worker." Text from www.geldscheine-online.com |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
These are not genuine banknotes but deliberate propaganda fabrications, almost certainly produced during the French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr in 1923. The occupation, which began in January of that year after Germany defaulted on reparations payments, triggered a German government-sponsored campaign of passive resistance — and a flood of unofficial printed material intended to humiliate or undermine the occupying forces.
The denomination itself is the point. One million marks meant almost nothing by mid-1923; hyperinflation had rendered the figure absurd, and printing it on a fake note was a sardonic joke about both the occupation and the collapsing currency simultaneously. Whether distributed as street propaganda, sold as novelties, or used in organized resistance leafleting is not uniformly documented across surviving examples.
No central issuing authority. No redemption value. Collector interest sits entirely in the political moment that made them possible.