Catalog
1 Mark
| Issuer | Gemeinde Altheide (Municipality of Altheide, Lower Silesia) |
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| Year | |
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| Value | 1 Mark |
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| Obverse description | Cream-toned note with a scalloped dark border enclosing a beige guilloché underprint of small heart motifs. A central oval vignette with blue vertical-line fill bears the large numeral '1' above the denomination 'Mark' in blackletter script, framed by decorative scroll flourishes. The heading 'Notgeld von Altheide' appears in Gothic blackletter at the top, with the validity clause 'Gültig bis zum Abruf' flanking the vignette and 'der Gemeinde Vorstand' at the foot, above two manuscript facsimile signatures. |
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| Reverse description | Dark navy background with a textured lateral fill flanking a central circular vignette outlined in a blue dashed ring, enclosing a line-engraved view of the entrance pavilion to the Sprudelhalle spa hall, rendered in fine black line work with flanking trees. The denomination '1 mk.' appears in large white numerals and abbreviated text in the upper left and right corners. A bold black panel at the base carries the slogan 'Altheide heilt's Herz' in white Gothic blackletter, with the printer's imprint 'L. SCHIRMER GLATZ' below. |
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| Comments |
Altheide — now Polanica-Zdrój — was a spa town in the Glatzer Kessel, the enclosed basin around Glatz that formed one of the more self-contained corners of Silesia. This note is Notgeld, emergency municipal currency, almost certainly issued during the acute small-change shortage that gripped Germany and its occupied territories between 1914 and the early 1920s. L. Schirmer was a local Glatz printer with no particular prestige — the kind of firm that produced dozens of nearly identical municipal issues across the region, varying only in the issuing authority's name.
Altheide's thermal baths brought seasonal visitors, which may have created more demand for small denomination exchange than a town of its size would otherwise require.