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20 Mark
| Issuer | Stadtrat Konstanz (City Council of Konstanz) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1918 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | Uniface-style letterpress design printed in brown on cream paper, with an all-over underprint of repeated Konstanz city arms — a white cross on a divided shield — arranged in a dense scrollwork pattern across the entire field. The heading 'Kriegsnotgeld der Stadt Konstanz' is set in Gothic Fraktur script at the top, with the denomination 'Zwanzig Mark.' in large bold Fraktur centrally placed; the numeral '20' appears in large figures at lower left and right. Three lines of text in the lower centre confirm validity within the city limits until 1 February 1919, payability at all municipal cashiers, the place and date of issue (Konstanz, November 1918), and the issuing authority 'Der Stadtrat,' beneath which two manuscript signatures appear. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Multicolour vignette printed in brown and blue, with a central landscape view of Lake Constance (Bodensee) and the Alpine foothills in the background, framed by an elaborate ornamental border. At the top centre, the Konstanz city arms — a cross on a divided shield — are suspended from draped banners tied with garlands of fruit and foliage, while diamond-shaped cartouches bearing the numeral '20' flank the composition at left and right. The denomination 'Zwanzig Mark.' in large Fraktur script and the legend 'Kriegsnotgeld der Stadt Konstanz.' in a lower banner panel complete the design; a circular embossed stamp is visible at lower right. |
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| Comments |
Konstanz sits on the Swiss border, and by late 1918 that geography mattered enormously. As the Imperial German economy buckled under four years of war and the Reichsbank struggled to keep small denominations in circulation, municipalities across the southwest began issuing their own emergency money — Notgeld — to keep local commerce moving. Konstanz was among them. The city council's authorization to print gave this note its legal standing within the municipality, though it carried no obligation beyond the issuing authority's own guarantee.
The embossed stamp is the anti-counterfeiting measure here, applied mechanically after printing to authenticate each note — a low-tech solution that proved adequate for the brief circulation period these issues were designed to cover.