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20 Mark
| Issuer | Stadtrat Karlsruhe (City Council of Karlsruhe) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1918 |
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| In circulation to | 1 February 1919 |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Haupt- und Residenzstadt Karlsruhe No [serial number] Gutschein über Zwanzig Mark Karlsruhe, 16. Oktober 1918. Der Stadtrat. Nur mit Trockenstempel gültig. |
| Reverse description | The reverse is printed in green and ochre-brown on cream paper. A large octagonal frame encloses a bird's-eye plan of Karlsruhe's radial street layout rendered as a central vignette, with denomination numerals '20' in brown corner cartouches and the repeated legend '20 Stadt Karlsruhe' along all four borders. Above the central vignette, a counterfeit warning in Fraktur text cites §149 RStGB, while below it a redemption notice states that the notes will be accepted at full face value by municipal cashiers and called in no later than 1 February 1919. The printer's imprint of C. F. Müllersche Hofbuchdruckerei, Karlsruhe appears at the foot. |
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| Comments |
Karlsruhe's city council, like hundreds of German municipal authorities in the final year of the First World War, issued this note to address the acute shortage of Reichsbank currency in local circulation — a problem that had been worsening since 1914 as metal coinage disappeared and central bank notes failed to reach smaller communities in sufficient quantities. This wave of municipal emergency money, Notgeld in the strict sense, was legally tolerated rather than officially sanctioned.
C. F. Müllersche Hofbuchdruckerei was the Baden court printer, based in Karlsruhe itself. Local printing was the norm for this type — the logistics of wartime made contracting to distant security printers impractical. The embossed dry seal substituted for the intaglio security printing that a peacetime issuer might have demanded.