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1000 Francs - Goddess Déméter type 1942
| Issuer | Banque de France |
|---|---|
| Year | 1942-1944 |
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| In circulation to | 4 June 1945 |
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| Obverse description | Central vignette presents a seated statue of Demeter to the right, with the infant Hercules upon her knee, rendered in fine intaglio. To the left, a Provençal pastoral landscape is evoked through a shepherd attending a flock of goats amid a gently rolling terrain. The denomination "MILLE FRANCS" and the issuer's title "BANQVE DE FRANCE" appear in prominent letterpress inscriptions within the border, flanked by the numeral 1000 at each side. |
|---|---|
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| Protection type | Watermark |
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| Comments |
The Déméter 1000 Francs was introduced under the Vichy administration at a moment when the Banque de France was operating under German occupation supervision, and the choice of an agrarian goddess was not incidental — Vichy's "Révolution nationale" actively promoted peasant land and rural virtue as ideological pillars. Whether Jonas's commission reflected that politics or simply continued the bank's longstanding preference for allegorical femininity is debatable, but the timing is hard to ignore.
Marguerite Dreyfus, who signed the reverse engraving as "Rita," was one of the very few women working at that level in French intaglio printing during the war years. The note circulated well into the Liberation period before being withdrawn.