This has to be one of the most bizarre discoveries made in Reading this year.

Amateur photographer Callum Cromwell said he was walking through Sycamore Road in Whitley when he found the note lying in a bush.

The note is for 10,000 German marks, and comes from a particularly bleak period in Germany's interwar past.

The note was issued by the Reichsbank, the German national bank of the time, in February 1922, during a period of hyper inflation of the Germancurrency.

The inflation of German currency was partly down to the huge war reparation costs imposed on the nation by the Treaty of Versailles, which forced thecountry into even deeper debt.

The German website Sammler says that by the end of 1923, wages were paid in wheelbaskets full of worthless notes.

Unfortunately for Mr Cromwell, of Reading, Berkshire, the bank note cannot be cashed in for euros.

But what of the man featured on the note itself?

It's actually a piece of art by one of Germany's most famous painters.

The picture is the Portrait of a Young Man, by artist Albrecht Durer, who lived during the Renaissance period.

To read the complete article, see:
The story behind the unusual banknote found in ahedge in Whitley (https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/berkshire-history/story-behind-unusual-banknote-found-16764670)

The German economy was quickly going into a downward spiral with no foreseeable way out. As the treaty was signed in Versailles, there was considerableblame laid upon the French for the economic drain placed on Germany. They felt as is they were being bled dry through the reparations. This banknote depictsthis feeling of the German people well. This note depicts the anti French sentiment held by most Germans at the time.

Although Durer's painting "Portrait of a young man" was chosen to be on the banknote, this painting was slightly altered by the engraver at theReichsdruckeri, who had altered the banknote in the neck of the portrait to depict a rather gothic looking vampire, representing France, which is sucking thelife blood out of the throat of Germany through reparations for World War I. It takes a bit of imagination, and a ninety-degree turn of the banknote to theleft, to see the hooded vampire, but once spotted, it is readily noticeable from then on. There were three variations of the note yet the altered design ofDurer's portrait was not corrected, showing obvious anti French sentiment held by the Reichsbank at the time.

To read the complete article, see:
(http://www.banknoteden.com/Germany.html)