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1 Mark

Issuer Municipality of Bielschowitz (Upper Silesia)
Year 1921
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Value 1 Mark
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Obverse description The obverse is centred on an oval vignette enclosing a soldier or insurgent figure set against a background of flames and an industrial skyline, evoking the Upper Silesian uprisings of 1921. The town name BIELSCHOWITZ is set in bold letterpress across the top, flanked by bilingual cartouches in German and Polish recording this as Notgeld issued in commemoration of the Polish uprising. A red denomination tablet at lower centre reads '1 Mark', below which the issue date '29. Juli 1921', validity text, and a facsimile signature of the Gemeindevorsteher appear in parallel German and Polish lines.
Obverse lettering BIELSCHOWITZ
Notgeld zur Erinnerung an den polnischen Aufstand 1921
Pieniądz tymczasowy na pamiątkę powstania polskiego w roku 1921
1 Mark
Gültig bis 1. Oktober 1922
Ważny do 1. paździk. 1922 r.
Bielschowitz, 29. Juli 1921
Bielszowice, dnia 29. lipca 1921
Der Gemeindevorsteher
Naczelnik gminy
K. MIARKA G.M.B.H. NIKOLAI O.S.
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Comments

Bielschowitz issued this note during the lead-up to the Upper Silesia plebiscite of March 1921, when the region's political future — German or Polish — was still unresolved. Municipal emergency currency of this type proliferated across Upper Silesia in the early 1920s precisely because central monetary authority was effectively suspended pending the partition decision.

K. Miarka G.m.b.H. in Nikolai was a Polish-language publishing house, its name honoring the 19th-century Silesian activist Karol Miarka — an unusual choice for a printer supplying German-denominated notgeld in a contested German-administered town.

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