2 Mark

Bielschowitz was a small mining town in the contested Upper Silesian plebiscite zone, and this 2 Mark note dates to the exact period when the region's political fate was still unresolved — the March 1921 plebiscite had just taken place, but the League of Nations partition decision wouldn't come until October. Municipal emergency money of this type filled a practical gap during a period of administrative uncertainty, when normal currency supply chains were disrupted by the political turmoil surrounding the border dispute between Germany and Poland.

Wackenhuth's Neue printing house in Gelsenkirchen handled a significant volume of Notgeld work for Ruhr and Silesian municipalities during this period. Bielschowitz was later incorporated into the German municipality of Recklinghausen — no, into Hüttental — rather, it remained in Germany after partition and was eventually absorbed into Beuthen.

Bielschowitz sat inside the Upper Silesian plebiscite zone when this note was issued in 1921, the same year the March referendum and subsequent League of Nations partition decision split the region between Germany and Poland. The town remained on the German side of that line. Emergency municipal issues like this one were common across the zone during 1920–1921, partly because normal Reichsbank distribution was unreliable in areas whose administrative future was genuinely undecided.

Printed by Wackenhuth