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Oorlogsbon - Bon de guerre
| Issuer | Stad Meenen / Ville de Menin |
|---|---|
| Year | |
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| Engraver(s) | R. Vandevoorde - A. Pardoen |
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| Obverse description | Dutch-language face of this World War I municipal emergency note issued by the city of Meenen (West Flanders), carrying the bilingual guarantee inscription 'Onder waarborg van Staat en Stad' and the denomination '100 Frank 100' in bold letterpress. The text panel states that the bon is redeemable on demand at the Meenen city treasury ('stadskas') after the war's conclusion. Engraved work attributed to R. Vandevoorde and A. Pardoen lends a formal typographic character to the note. |
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| Obverse lettering | Onder waarborg van Staat en Stad West-Vlaanderen Stad MEENEN Oorlogsbon van 100 Frank 100 Terug te betalen na den oorlog. Deze bon zal op zicht terugbetaalbaar zijn op de stadskas van Meenen. |
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Menin — Meenen in Dutch — sits directly on the Franco-Belgian border along the Lys river, and by late 1914 it was under German occupation. Like dozens of Belgian communes cut off from the national banking system, the town issued its own emergency paper to keep local commerce functioning. These "oorlogsbonnen" or war bonds were a purely local solution to a currency vacuum, authorized at the municipal level with no backing from any central authority.
The engravers Vandevoorde and Pardoen were local craftsmen, not commercial printers — an unusual arrangement that gives the note a distinctly hand-finished quality compared to the more polished emergency issues from larger Belgian cities.