25 Kran Overprinted on German 10 Mark

The Azerbaijan People's Government — a short-lived Soviet-backed administration established in Iranian Azerbaijan in late 1945 — had no printing infrastructure of its own. The solution was blunt: overprint captured or stockpiled German 10 Mark notes from the 1916–1917 Reichsbanknote series with a 25 Kran valuation. The exchange rate implied by the overprint bore little relationship to any functioning market; it was an administrative act, not a monetary one.

The original Reichsdruckerei notes were wartime issues, printed under the pressures of the First World War economy. That a note designed for Berlin commerce ended up recirculated in Tabriz under a separatist government thirty years later is the kind of trajectory no issuing authority anticipates.