20 Mark

The Memel Territory — a strip of Lithuanian coastline forcibly detached from Germany by the Versailles Treaty and placed under French administration — had a currency problem by 1922. The occupying authorities had not established a functioning monetary system, and the local Chamber of Commerce stepped in to fill the gap with a series of notgeld issues. That a commercial chamber, rather than any bank or government body, became the de facto monetary authority tells you something about how administratively improvised the French mandate actually was.

Gebrüder Parcus of Munich handled the printing — the same firm responsible for a substantial share of Bavarian notgeld output in this period. The watermarked paper was a meaningful security step for an emergency issue of this kind.