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20 000 000 Mark
| Issuer | Kreise Bonn-Stadt, Bonn-Land und Siegkreis (Districts of Bonn and Sieg) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | Cream-toned note with a brown guilloche border and ornamental rosettes at each corner bearing the numeral '20'. To the left, a large decorative calligraphic 'Z' rendered in black and ochre Fraktur script introduces the denomination 'Zwanzig Millionen' in bold Gothic letterpress across the upper field. Below the denomination, a block of text in period Gothic type states the note's legal basis and acceptance conditions, alongside a pale underprint of the Bonn civic coat of arms; the date 'Bonn, den 10. September 1923' appears at lower left, with two manuscript signatures below the designations 'Der Oberbürgermeister' and 'Die Handelskammer Bonn', accompanied by a circular red official seal of the city of Bonn at lower left. The series letter 'REIHE F' is printed in the upper left, with a red serial number at upper right. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | 20 000 000 Mark Bonn |
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| Comments |
By August 1923, the Reichsbank could no longer supply enough emergency currency to keep local economies functioning, so municipalities and regional districts across Germany began printing their own — the Notgeld system operating at its most desperate extreme. This 20-million-Mark note is a product of that collapse: the three districts of Bonn-Stadt, Bonn-Land, and Siegkreis issued jointly rather than separately, a practical pooling of resources that was itself an admission of how fast the situation was deteriorating.
Twenty million marks sounds extraordinary, but within weeks of this note's printing, the figure was already inadequate. The Rhenania-Druckerei in Bonn was printing denominations that would have been unimaginable twelve months earlier.