Deutsche-Asiatische Bank One Tael banknote 1.3.1907 Peking Branch, P-S279r.
Obverse: Crowned bust of Germania holding a lance and shield emblazoned with the German eagle. In the upper left corner of the note is found an eagle of the Reich with the letters D.A.B. upon its breast. The lower left hand corner contains a frontal view of the imperial dragon. At the bottom center appears the name of the branch of issue in a large rectangle. The text on the front of the notes is in both German and Chinese, and on the reverse in English as well as Chinese.
Reverse: The back of the notes portray two Germanias facing each other. The text on the back of the notes is in both English and Chinese “THE DEUTSCH-ASIATISCHE BANK promises to pay the bearer ONE TAEL PEKING - CURRENCY at its office in Peking“.
Size: 125 x 187mm
Printed by the firm of Giesecke and Devrient in Leipzig.
Banknotes from German colony of Kiaochou in China
Deutsch-Asiatische Bank 1907 Issue
1 Tael 5 Taels 10 Taels 20 Taels 50 Taels 100 Taels 500 Taels
Banknotes from former German colony of Kiaochou in China.
Following the German acquisition of Kiaochou in 1898, the colony was placed under the jurisdiction of the Imperial Naval Office and a trading and naval port established at Tsingtao, the capital. The Imperial Maritime customs was set up soon thereafter for collection of duties on goods shipped to and from the interior. The German government built up the city of Tsingtao, running it as a model colony. Tsingtao was a center for the flour, paper and cotton milling industries and for fishing and shipyards. Extensive salt deposits were also mined nearby. Later on the Germans built a large brewery which today bottles the famous Tsingtao beer. Educational and agricultural institutions were opened throughout the leased territory.
To promote its trade interests in the newly acquired territory, several of the major German banks joined together to form a joint venture to serve their Chinese interests. The Deutsch-Asiatische Bank was thus established. With a capital of five million taels (22,500,000 mark) it opened its doors in Shanghai. This bank soon followed the example and practices of other foreign banks in China, which had been established for quite some time. (As early as 1872 a branch of the Deutsche Bank in Berlin was opened in Shanghai but closed in 1875 for lack of business.) The creation of the Deutsche-Asiatische Bank placed it in direct competition with other foreign banks, all of whom had been operating in China for some time. These included two Belgian, three British, two French, one Dutch, one Portuguese, two Russian, one Scandinavian, three American and three Japanese banks. In the beginning the German bank was less than successful. After the Boxer rebellion was suppressed, business grew and branch offices were set up in Tsingtao, Tientsin, Peking, Hankow, Hong Kong and Canton. The bank, at that time however, did not have the power to print and issue its own banknotes, a right enjoyed by all the other foreign banks. This was finally corrected in 1906, when permission from the German government was obtained. At this time the Chinese monetary system lacked uniformity, and in 1907, it was not possible to issue banknotes of uniform denomination. Each Deutsche-Asiatische Bank branch therefore had to issue its own series of notes because the local monetary unit was not the same in the different locales. Consequently, different kinds of notes were issued by the various branch banks (the Hong Kong and Canton branches did not issue notes). Two major types of banknotes were emitted, one in dollars and the other in taels. The Chinese tael was an ingot of commercially pure silver in the shape of a shoe (called sycee by the Chinese) which had a different weight in each major trading city. The three principal units used in everyday commerce were the custom’s tael, weighing 38.24 grams, the Shanghai tael, with a weight of 36.64 grams and the Mexican dollar weighing 26.69 grams. The “Mex” got its name because the bulk of the silver dollars circulating in Chinese trade were of Mexican origin. The note issues of the Deutsche-Asiatische Bank were strictly controlled by the home office in Germany and never reached large amounts.
The notes issued on the five Deutsche-Asiatische Bank branches were similar in most respects, although there were significant differences. All tael and dollar notes were printed by the firm of Giesecke and Devrient in Leipzig and were of very superior workmanship. The face of each banknote carries as its principal motif a crowned Germania holding a lance and shield emblazoned with the German eagle. In the upper left corner of the note is found an eagle of the Reich with the letters D.A.B. upon its breast. The lower left hand corner contains a frontal view of the imperial dragon. At the bottom center appears the name of the branch of issue in a large rectangle. The text on the front of the notes is in both German and Chinese, and on the reverse in English as well as Chinese. The back of the notes portray two Germanias facing each other. The notes were printed on good quality white watermarked paper. All notes were large in size, the smaller denominations measuring 125 x 187mm and the larger 25 through 200 dollar and 20 tael notes, 135 x 200mm. Notes which had been placed into circulation contain two handwritten signatures, while remainders from the vaults of the DeutscheAsiatische Bank or notes in-transit at the outset of World War I do not.
The 1 March, 1907 series of Deutsche-Asiatische banknotes contained denominations of 1, 5, 10, 25 and 50 dollars , and in taels 1, 5, 10 and 20. One and two hundred dollar and 50, 100 and 500 tael notes were added in 1914, but not uniformly for all branches. Other differences may be found in the German text on the notes. Both dollar and tael notes on the Shanghai, Peking, Hankow and Tientsin branches bear the inscription “Zehn dollar ( tael, etc.) ortsublicher Handelsmunze zahlt die Deutsche-Asiatische Bank dem Einlieferer dieser Banknote an ihrer hiesigen Kasse.” The reverse side of each note translates the German as “The Deutsche Asiatische Bank promises to pay the bearer ten dollars (taels, etc.) local currency at its office in Peking (Shanghai, etc.) Tsingtao notes, however, contain a significantly different text which reads: “… bie ihren Niederlassungen im Deutschen Schutzgebiet Kiautschou und in der Chinesischen Provinz Schnatung.”
(… at its offices in the German colony Kiaochau and in the Chinese province of Shantung.) The Tsingtao notes can therefore justifiably be called the official currency of the colony Kiaochau.
In Tsingtao and Tientsin only dollar notes were issued. All other branch banks issued tael as well as dollar banknotes. The Tsingtao branch was allowed, by concession agreement with the Chinese, to issue dollar notes for the entire Shantung province. Because of this, the dollar banknotes circulating were eighty times the amount of the tael notes, making the Tsingtao branch by far the banks most important.
Deutsche-Asiatische Bank notes also contain two distinctively different watermarks. The first of these, which appears on the 1907 issue is known as the “eight cornered cross flower design”. The second watermark consists of the stock Giesecke-Devrient cross star design with the alternating letters “D-G” superimposed. The latter watermark commonly appears on German banknotes of the period. Colors used by Giesecke-Devrient in the printing of the notes were the same for each different value, irrespective of the branch of issue. In 1914 additional denominations of 100, 200 dollars and 50, 100 and 500 taels were authorized and printed, but not uniformly for all branches. These notes were on their way to the colony when World War I broke out. Unfortunately for the Germans, the ship was interdicted and captured by a British submarine and directed to an English port where the notes were offloaded.
After Japan had declared war on Germany in World War I, her first military objective was the capture of the port of Tsingtao, which served as an operational base for such German sea marauders as the SMS Emden, SMS Ziethern and SMS Bremen. These ships preyed upon commerce using the Allied trade routes in the Western Pacific. A blockade of Tsingtao by the Japanese navy commenced in August 1914, thereby precipitating a run on the bank by Chinese and Europeans alike seeking to convert their notes into gold. In the following month troops were landed on the north shore of Shantung and rapidly advanced on the German stronghold. Fortified by a British force, the Japanese directed a week long attack upon Kiaochou's land defenses, while at the same time bombarding them from their blockading fleet. On 14 November, 1914 the Germans capitulated. Japan subsequently held Tsingtao until 1922 when it was ordered returned to China as part of the Washington Agreement on China and naval rearmament.
During the siege of Tsingtao over one million dollars in banknotes were burned. Other notes found their way aboard supply ships sent to support the Duke of Spee squadron. A portion of this paper money was intended to pay the German marine garrison in Shanghai. These notes also found continuing circulation amongst the German prisoners of war interned in Japan. When China entered World War I in 1917 on the side of the Allies, all Deutsche-Asiatische Bank branches were closed and their notes declared invalid. Nevertheless the notes of this bank were so highly prized that they were still being cashed as late as 1939. An entry on the books of the Deutsche-Asiatishe Bank in that year shows a balance of $56,000 still outstanding. This helps to explain the extreme rarity of the notes which had been placed into circulation.