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5000 Francs - Empire Français type 1942
| Issuer | Banque de France |
|---|---|
| Year | 1942-1947 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 5000 BANQUE DE FRANCE 5000 CINQ MILLE FRANCS |
| Reverse description | Central bust of a young allegorical female figure, mirroring the obverse vignette, flanked by two maritime landscape vignettes: the Basque coast at left and the port of Rabat at right. The surrounding design incorporates fruit and plant motifs within a rich guilloche underprint, with the denomination 5000 in large numerals at left and right, and the anti-counterfeiting legal warning in intaglio lettering along the lower portion. |
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| Comments |
This note entered circulation under German occupation and remained current through Liberation and into the early postwar years — an unusually long run for a single design that spans two radically different political regimes. The Banque de France continued operating under Vichy with a degree of institutional continuity that postwar France found uncomfortable, and the unchanged signature block of Belin and Rousseau persisting from 1942 through 1945 is a quiet record of that continuity.
Marguerite Dreyfus, who signed her engraving work as "Rita," was one of the very few women working in that trade at the Banque de France's atelier during this period. Gargam replaced Favre-Gilly in the final 1947 signature combination, marking the only structural change across five years of issue.