2 Guldens

The Königlich Bayerische Staats-Schuldentilgungs-Commission — the Royal Bavarian State Debt Redemption Commission — was an unusual issuer for circulating paper money, its primary mandate being debt management rather than currency emission. That this body was authorizing small-denomination notes in 1866 reflects the fiscal strain Bavaria was under, compounded by the disastrous Austro-Prussian War that same year, in which Bavaria backed Austria and found itself on the losing side.

Printing was contracted to Carl Naumann's Druckerei in Frankfurt — then still a free city absorbed into Prussia only weeks after this note's issue year. Bavaria would lose its monetary independence entirely within a decade, subsumed into the German Reich in 1871.