20 Mark

Essen's 1922 notgeld issue belongs to the inflationary emergency currency wave that overwhelmed German municipal finance as the Reichsbank lost control of purchasing power. Stadt Essen, as an industrial center of the Ruhr, had both the commercial urgency and the local printing infrastructure to act quickly — W. Girardet was an established Essen press, not a distant contractor.

The Boetter design credit is worth noting. Wilhelm Boetter was among several regional commercial artists producing notgeld graphics during this period, when municipalities briefly treated emergency currency as something close to civic art.