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20 Mark
| Issuer | Stadt Breslau (City of Breslau) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1918 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | Brown letterpress note with an elaborate interlaced guilloche border enclosing the entire face. The issuer name "Stadt Breslau" appears in Gothic blackletter script at upper left, with a red serif serial number at upper right and series letter "D" flanking the centre. The denomination "Zwanzig Mark" is set in large Gothic display type across the centre, above a fine rosette guilloche underprint, with the date and authorising legend "Der Magistrat" below, accompanied by two manuscript signatures. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Stadt Breslau / Gutschein über / Zwanzig Mark / Breslau, den 29. Oktober 1918 / Der Magistrat / Dieser Gutschein wird von der Stadthauptkasse in Breslau bis zum Ablauf des 25. Januar 1919 eingelöst. Er verliert nach diesem Tage seine Gültigkeit / Grass, Barth & Comp. (W. Friedrich) Breslau |
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| Comments |
Breslau's municipal authority issued this 20 Mark note in 1918 as Notgeld — emergency currency produced locally to address the chronic small-denomination coin shortage that plagued German cities during the final year of the war. By that point, hoarding of metallic coinage had reduced everyday transactional money to near-zero in circulation, forcing hundreds of German municipalities to act independently of the Reichsbank.
Grass, Barth & Comp. was a well-established Breslau printing house, which made local production straightforward. The city wouldn't remain German long enough for this to matter much — Breslau became Wrocław under Polish administration in 1945 after one of the war's most destructive sieges.