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 Mark
| Issuer | Stadtgemeinderat Grünhain (Federal state of Saxony) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1917 |
| 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 | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Wiedemannsche Druckerei AG, Saalfeld, Thüringen, Germany |
| 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 | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Green and black letterpress note with a wavy guilloche border framing a large central vignette executed in a woodcut-inspired illustrative style, depicting the capture of Kunz von Kauffungen by charcoal burners in a dense forest setting near Fürstenberg bei Grünhain on 14 July 1455; an armoured figure lies at lower left while standing figures restrain the kidnapper with a pole. A rhyming couplet in Fraktur script runs above the vignette as a caption, and a two-line historical legend in Fraktur is set within a ruled panel below the image. |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Watermark |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
Grünhain is a small town in the Erzgebirge, and its municipal council — the Stadtgemeinderat — issued this note as Kriegsgeld, the emergency paper money that proliferated across German municipalities after metallic coinage effectively vanished from circulation following the outbreak of war in 1914. By 1917 the shortage was acute enough that even minor administrative bodies were authorized to issue low-denomination scrip to keep local commerce functioning.
Wiedemannsche Druckerei AG in Saalfeld was a regional commercial printer, not a specialist security firm, which makes the presence of a watermark here worth noting — a modest but deliberate concession to fraud prevention in what was otherwise utilitarian wartime production.