100 Zlotys German occupation

The Bank Emisyjny w Polsce was a German-controlled institution established in April 1940 specifically to replace the Bank of Poland and manage currency in the General Government — the occupied Polish territory not incorporated directly into the Reich. Its notes were legal tender within that zone but explicitly excluded from the Greater German Reich itself, a deliberate monetary partition designed to prevent the occupied population from accessing German economic infrastructure.

The Sowiński brothers split design duties across the two faces — an unusual arrangement, and one of the few documented cases of siblings sharing engraving responsibilities on a single wartime issue. Printed quantity exceeded twelve million, yet wartime attrition, the 1945 currency replacement, and systematic destruction mean circulated survivors are considerably less common than the print run implies.