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20 Mark
| Issuer | Magistrat der Stadt Eschwege |
|---|---|
| Year | 1918 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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| Obverse description | Printed in brown on a pale beige ground, the obverse carries the issuing authority legend in decorative blackletter type at the top, followed by the denomination 'Zwanzig Mark' in large ornate Fraktur script occupying the central field. A large lightly printed underprint numeral '20' appears behind the text block, while the four corners each bear a circular guilloche medallion with the numeral '20'. A three-line redemption text in italic script and the place-date 'Eschwege 1918' are set below, with two manuscript signatures of the Magistrat to the lower right and a red-printed serial prefix letter with black numeral to the lower left. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The reverse repeats the obverse layout in its entirety, printed in the same brown-on-beige colour scheme with identical Fraktur and italic typography, the same ornamental corner medallions bearing the numeral '20', the large underprint '20', and the full redemption text and Magistrat signatures, indicating the note was printed uniformly on both sides without a distinct pictorial reverse design. |
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| Comments |
Eschwege is a small town in Hesse-Nassau, and this 1918 municipal emergency note is precisely the kind of hyperlocal Notgeld that proliferated across Germany in the final year of the First World War as coin disappeared from circulation entirely and the Reichsbank struggled to supply smaller denominations to outlying communities. J. Adolf Schwarz in Lindenberg was one of dozens of regional printers pressed into producing these issues, working from relatively simple typographic layouts under wartime material constraints.
The dual signature of Dr. Holzenburg and Fritz — the latter recorded without a surname, almost certainly a clerical oversight in the original authorization documents — is a detail that occasionally trips up catalogers working this series.