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20 Mark

Issuer Stadt Niederlahnstein (City of Niederlahnstein)
Year 1922
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Size 119 × 75 mm
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Reverse description Black letterpress print on cream-white paper with a castellated and foliate decorative border. The central vignette presents a riverside view of a Gothic church or castle tower framed by an arched gateway, with a sailboat on the water in the foreground; the city arms bearing an anchor appear in solid black panels to the left and right. Denomination rhombus cartouches inscribed 'Gut für 20 Mark' are placed symmetrically at lower left and lower right, with the issuer name 'Stadt Niederlahnstein' in bold Gothic script across the lower margin. The red serial number is printed at upper centre, and the designer's name 'W. GRAEB.' appears at lower right.
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Protection type Watermark
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Comments

Niederlahnstein sat directly across the Lahn from Oberlahnstein, and the two towns' long rivalry makes it mildly ironic that the city contracted the printing to Schickel, a firm operating on the other bank. The 1922 inflation emergency drove dozens of small German municipalities into issuing their own Notgeld at denominations previously considered absurd for local scrip — 20 Mark being very much a product of that accelerating collapse rather than any peacetime municipal tradition.

The watermark is an unusual security investment for a municipal emergency issue of this period; most Notgeld of comparable provenance skipped it entirely. W. Graeb's designer credit is relatively rare to find documented at this level of issue.

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