Itzehoe's 100,000 Mark emergency issue belongs to the frantic summer of 1923, when German municipal authorities scrambled to print denominations that would have been unimaginable just two years earlier. The Reichsbank simply could not supply enough notes fast enough, and cities across Schleswig-Holstein — Itzehoe among them — contracted local and regional printers to fill the gap. W. Gente in Hamburg was a practical choice: close, fast, and capable of producing a watermarked sheet, which is more than many comparable notgeld printers managed at this stage of the inflation.
The watermark is worth noting — by mid-1923, anti-counterfeiting measures on municipal issues were largely symbolic, since the notes themselves would be worthless within weeks.
Itzehoe's 100,000 Mark emergency issue belongs to the frantic summer of 1923, when German municipal authorities scrambled to print denominations that would have been unimaginable just two years earlier. The Reichsbank simply could not supply enough notes fast enough, and cities across Schleswig-Holstein — Itzehoe among them — contracted local and regional printers to fill the gap. W. Gente in Hamburg was a practical choice: close, fast, and capable of producing a watermarked sheet, which is more than many comparable notgeld printers managed at this stage of the inflation.
The watermark is worth noting — by mid-1923, anti-counterfeiting measures on municipal issues were largely symbolic, since the notes themselves would be worthless within weeks.