Neisse (now Nysa, Poland) issued this notgeld piece during the acute coin shortage that followed Germany's post-WWI economic dislocation, when municipal authorities across Silesia took it upon themselves to produce emergency currency rather than wait for a central government that could not keep pace with demand. The "Alte Wage" — the old weighhouse — was a landmark civic building in Neisse's market square, its inclusion here a pointed assertion of local identity at a moment when the region's political future was genuinely uncertain.
Upper Silesia's fate was being decided by plebiscite that same year, with the vote held in March 1921.
Neisse (now Nysa, Poland) issued this notgeld piece during the acute coin shortage that followed Germany's post-WWI economic dislocation, when municipal authorities across Silesia took it upon themselves to produce emergency currency rather than wait for a central government that could not keep pace with demand. The "Alte Wage" — the old weighhouse — was a landmark civic building in Neisse's market square, its inclusion here a pointed assertion of local identity at a moment when the region's political future was genuinely uncertain.
Upper Silesia's fate was being decided by plebiscite that same year, with the vote held in March 1921.