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1 Franc - Ville de Colmar [68]
| Issuer | Ville de Colmar (Municipal Commission) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1918 |
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| Printer | Albert Jess, Colmar, France |
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| Obverse description | Blue letterpress on pale green paper, with a guilloche-patterned border enclosing ornamental corner rosettes bearing interlaced initials. At left, a vignette of the monument to General Rapp on its inscribed pedestal; at upper centre, the municipal coat of arms of Colmar. The denomination UN FRANC appears in white letters on a solid dark blue panel at centre right, with the emission date, serial number, series letter, two manuscript signatures, and the printer's imprint below. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Plain cream paper with a faint guilloche underprint border and ghost impressions of the corner rosettes visible in the corners. The entire central field is occupied by a block of letterpress text in French, set in a distinctive upper-and-lower-case display typeface, detailing the legal authority for the issue and the redemption conditions. |
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| Comments |
Colmar's municipal emergency notes of 1918 were issued under Allied occupation following the German withdrawal from Alsace — a territory that had been Reich territory since 1871 and had never previously issued French-authority local paper. The Ville de Colmar faced an acute small-change shortage in the chaotic weeks of the armistice transition, well before the French Treasury could normalize currency supply in the newly reintegrated departments of Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin.
Albert Jess was a local Colmar printer, which places this note firmly in the tradition of improvisational municipal issue rather than coordinated wartime monetary policy. The JP#130 reference covers at least three catalogue varieties within this denomination, suggesting multiple print runs or authorization dates across a short issuance window.