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20 000 000 Mark
| Issuer | Stadtkasse Speyer (Notgeld, Bavaria) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | 158 x 108 mm |
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| Reverse description | A full-face artistic vignette in dark green lithographic style portrays robed medieval emperors and attendants on a riverbank, with Speyer Cathedral silhouetted against a dramatic sky in the background. The denomination "Zwanzig Millionen Mark" appears in blackletter at the top, the numeral "20 000 000" in stylised cartouche at the foot. A two-line poetic verse in Gothic script runs along the lower margin. |
| Reverse lettering | Zwanzig Millionen Mark 20 000 000 "Er hält in den Händen das lohnende Geld Drauf glühen aus aller Zeit und Welt / Viel stolze Kaiserbilder." |
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| Comments |
Speyer's municipal treasury issued this note at the absolute peak of Weimar hyperinflation — 20 million Mark was a denomination that would have seemed surreal eighteen months earlier. The Stadtkasse was one of hundreds of local German authorities forced into emergency currency production in 1923 because Reichsbank notes were arriving too slowly to keep pace with price increases that could double within a single day.
Bavarian Notgeld from this period was printed locally under considerable logistical pressure, and quality control was often secondary to speed. Speyer had been under French occupation since 1918 as part of the Rhineland administration, a circumstance that added political friction to an already chaotic monetary environment.