75 Pfennig, Stadt Landsberg in Oberschlesien, 1921 (the plebiscite struggle)

By 1921 Notgeld had turned from wartime necessity into a collectors' market, and in Upper Silesia the paper also carried politics.

Landsberg in Oberschlesien - today Gorzów Śląski in southern Poland - is a small town in the Olesno (Rosenberg) district, first mentioned in 1241. The Treaty of Versailles put the future of Upper Silesia, a region of mixed Polish and German population, to a plebiscite held on 20 March 1921. The region returned an overall German majority while much of the south-east voted Polish, and the disputed outcome was followed in May 1921 by the Third Silesian Uprising, in which Polish insurgents fought to join the area to Poland and German self-defence units resisted. Landsberg issued these notes in that spring (dated 24 May 1921), adding the line Befreiung v. d. polnisch. Insurgent. - the German town's commemoration of its deliverance from the Polish insurgents. The description here follows the note's own, partisan, point of view.

This 75-Pfennig note is the set's allegorical piece: the back shows two figures struggling over a flaming cauldron, lettered Oberschlesien / Landsberg - an emblem of the fight over Upper Silesia's fate. Its companions are [[notgeld-landsberg-oberschlesien-75-pfennig-stadt]] and [[notgeld-landsberg-oberschlesien-50-pfennig]].