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1 Rupie
| Issuer | Kaiserliches Gouvernement von Deutsch-Ostafrika |
|---|---|
| Year | 1915 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | P#16 |
| Obverse description | Imperial eagle vignette at upper left, with serial letter prefix and number. Text reading "Kraft besonderer Ermächtigung" appears below the date at left, with the countersignature inscription "In Vollmacht A. Frühling" at right. Serial letter indicators K and L appear on the note. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Plain rectangular border frame enclosing bilingual text in German and Swahili attesting to the full backing of the note by the Imperial Government of German East Africa (Kaiserliches Gouvernement von Deutsch-Ostafrika). A counterfeiting warning in German occupies the lower portion of the note, and the serial number with letter prefix K is repeated at both upper left and lower right within the border. |
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| Comments |
Deutsch-Ostafrika's 1915 paper issues were born out of necessity. When the war severed the territory from Germany and British naval blockades made resupply impossible, Governor Heinrich Schnee's administration turned to locally produced emergency currency. The colony's isolation was nearly total — no metropolitan printing house, no security paper stocks, no established infrastructure for note production. What resulted was a series of notes improvised under genuine wartime constraint.
P#16 is part of that improvised output, printed in Dar es Salaam under conditions that varied batch to batch. Signatures, serial number placement, and paper quality differ across surviving examples — not errors, but the natural product of emergency production. Schnee himself signed some issues personally.