75 Mark

The Memel Territory was detached from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles and placed under French administration in 1920, pending a final settlement. The Handelskammer — a regional chamber of commerce rather than a central bank — issued this note because the territory lacked any proper monetary authority of its own. It was an improvised solution to a genuinely unclear political situation.

Gebrüder Parcus in Munich had a long record printing Notgeld and emergency issues during the inflationary chaos of the early Weimar years. The watermark is one of the few concessions to security on what was, functionally, a stopgap instrument. Lithuania seized the territory by force in January 1923, rendering the entire Handelskammer series obsolete within months of issue.