20 Mark

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.