Catalog
1 Franc
| Issuer | City of Dendermonde (Province of East Flanders) |
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| Year | |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | 91 × 69.5 mm |
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| Obverse description | A typeset letterpress note in Dutch, bearing a four-line legend across the face with the municipal coat of arms of Dendermonde printed at lower left as the sole vignette. Validation is provided by an applied blue ink municipal stamp. The layout is unornamented, reflecting wartime emergency issue conventions. |
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| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The reverse is blank cream paper with no independent design elements, vignettes, or overprints; faint bleed-through of the letterpress impression from the obverse may be visible on the plain surface. |
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| Comments |
Dendermonde issued its own emergency paper money during the German occupation of World War I, when the Belgian National Bank's note supply could not reliably reach occupied towns and municipal authorities were left to fill the gap themselves. These local issues — sometimes called *noodgeld* or bons de nécessité — were printed under constrained conditions, often with limited anti-counterfeiting measures and modest print runs tied to local commercial needs.
Dendermonde had been particularly hard hit: the town was shelled and largely burned by German forces in late August 1914, one of the early atrocities that drew international press attention. A municipality still rebuilding while simultaneously issuing its own currency is an unusual administrative circumstance worth noting.