The manufacture of the first Luxembourg banknotes is particularly well documented. Following the establishment of Banque Internationale à Luxembourg on 8 March 1856, a programme for the issue of six series of banknotes (10 thaler, 5 guilders, 25 francs, 100 francs, 5 Rhenish guilders, 10 Rhenish guilders) was launched on 1 September 1856. In the end, the project immediately ran up against Prussia’s restrictive regulations and hostility on the part of the Dutch government. As a result, the circulation of the first series, the ten-thaler note, collapsed after a few months, and the bank abandoned the idea of issuing the other series. As a result, only a few demonetized notes and other proofs still exist today. They are among the great rarities of our economic and monetary history.

The copper plates used for printing the front and back of the banknotes were made by the F.G. Wagner Jr. company in Berlin, who also made the reverse on behalf of the Cologne publishing house M. DuMont-Schauberg. Matrices and printing plates were kept under close surveillance.

Any too worn out to use were rendered unusable by F. G. Wagner Jr. in Berlin while those that were still usable were returned and kept in Luxembourg.

So well kept in fact, that until the recent acquisition of the only two known plates, we had no idea of what they looked like and how the notes were arranged, four to a plate. This plate is for the back of the 5 Rhenish guilder note, which was never put into circulation. And yet, the printing proofs had been sent from Cologne by M. DuMont-Schauberg on 10 March 1857 and approved by BIL, which had complained about the defective quality of the reverse. Although the banknotes could not be produced in the quantity ordered because of the many spoilt sheets at the time of printing, 72,400 copies were nevertheless delivered before 20 May 1857 – but unfortunately we have not been able to acquire a single copy.