1000 Zlotych

Bank Polski's 1000 Złotych of 1919 was part of the first sovereign Polish note issue following the re-establishment of an independent Polish state after 123 years of partition. The timing was precarious — Poland was simultaneously fighting wars on multiple fronts, and the new currency had to assert legitimacy against a population that had spent generations using Russian rubles, German marks, and Austrian kronen depending on which corner of the country they lived in.

Waterlow & Sons handled the printing, as they did for a number of newly reconstituted or transitional governments in this period. The 1000 Złotych denomination was the highest in this issue, which made it both economically significant and a natural target for counterfeiting pressure during the inflationary chaos of the early 1920s.