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5 Tomans Overprint on 20 Marks of Germany
| Issuer | Azerbaijan People's Government |
|---|---|
| Year | 1916-1917 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse of the underlying German 20 Mark note is centred on a large guilloche medallion with the numeral '20' in orange-red at its core, surrounded by concentric rings of intricate lathe-work and smaller rosette cartouches bearing the denomination '20 MARK' and 'REICHSBANKNOTE' in Gothic lettering; the serial number appears in black at both top and bottom centre. Red Persian overprints of '۵ پنج' and '۵ تومان' are applied in all four corners, with a red handstamp at lower centre consistent with the Azerbaijan People's Government provisional issue. |
| Reverse lettering | N·0232079 REICHSBANKNOTE 20 ZWANZIG MARK پنج ۵ تومان ۵ |
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| Comments |
The Azerbaijan People's Government — the short-lived Soviet-backed administration that controlled Iranian Azerbaijan from late 1945 into mid-1946 — needed circulating currency quickly and had no press infrastructure of its own. The solution was to overprint captured or requisitioned German Reichsbank notes from the First World War era, specifically the 20 Mark issue of 1914–1918, with a Toman denomination in Persian script.
The underlying Reichsdruckerei notes were nearly three decades old by the time the overprint was applied, long demonetized in Germany. That a provincial separatist government in northwestern Iran was still putting them into circulation in 1945–46 says everything about the improvised nature of the regime's monetary arrangements. The overprint itself is typographically crude — applied locally, not in Berlin.