20 Gulden Queen Emma

Enschedé had been printing for De Nederlandsche Bank since the nineteenth century, and this note shows that relationship at its most assured — a domestic commission executed entirely in Haarlem without recourse to foreign security printers, which was still not universal practice among smaller European central banks of the period.

The timing matters. Notes dated within this range were issued across the German occupation of the Netherlands beginning May 1940, meaning a significant portion of the print run circulated under Nazi administration. De Nederlandsche Bank continued operating under occupation, a contested arrangement that kept the currency nominally stable but served German requisitioning as much as Dutch commerce.