10 Pfennig, Stadt Johannisburg, 1920

This copy

Accession: OM-00429
Series year: 1920
Actually issued: 1920
magistrate: not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
Grade: UNC (IBNS)
As issued: full body, square corners, bright unfaded ink and no fold through the design. Estimated from the 600 dpi archival scan, which shows folds, soiling and edge condition but not paper crispness, pinholes, pressing or small repairs.
Estimated value: $10 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-26.
Dimensions: 85.6 × 55.9 mm (±0.5, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Weimar Republic East Prussia Masuria Plebiscite

The type

Type: 10 Pfennig, Stadt Johannisburg, 1920
Printer: Flemming-Wiskott A.-G., Glogau
Rarity: common

JohannisburgGermany, 1920 borders

Symbology

The plebiscite of 1920: Held under Allied supervision while the Red Army was at the gates of Warsaw. The result was overwhelming and the note is a celebration of it.
The wrecked Bismarck monument: The reverse shows the town hall beside the Bismarck memorial *destroyed by the Russians in 1914* - Johannisburg was overrun twice in the first months of the war and largely burnt.
Masurenland, mein Vaterland: "Masuria, my fatherland." Four lines of a Masurian song beneath the picture. Johannisburg is Pisz in Poland today, and its German population is gone.

What was happening

Notgeld began in 1914 out of necessity: coin vanished into hoards within weeks of mobilisation and towns printed their own small change because the Reichsbank could not supply enough.

By 1920 it had become something else. The shortage was easing but the collector market was not, and a town could take real marks for paper it hoped would never be presented. So the municipalities commissioned Serienscheine: lithographed sets, printed far beyond any local need, illustrated with whatever the place was proud of - a legend, a famous son, a battle, a joke in dialect. The result is the most inventive body of graphic design in the history of paper money, made by places with a few thousand inhabitants, in the years when Germany's currency was dying.

This note commemorates a vote. On 11 July 1920 the people of Masuria and Warmia were asked whether to stay with East Prussia or join Poland; in the Johannisburg district the German vote was close to unanimous. The town issued this in October to mark it, and says so on the face: gab dieses Stadtgeld heraus zur Erinnerung an die deutsche Abstimmung.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 10 Pfennig, Stadt Johannisburg, 1920 in the collection.

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