Hungary P109 20 Pengő 1941 VF Very Fine circulated—Woman—Shepherd—Blue

Banknote Characteristics

• Front: Shepherd and sheep at lower centre; portrait of woman wearing national costume at right
• Back: Old man and young woman at centre; denomination inscribed in Hungarian, German, Slovak, Romanian, Rusyn, and Serbian
• Color: Blue on tan and light green underprint (obverse); multicolor (reverse)
• Watermark: Present
• Composition: Paper
• Size: 165 × 76 mm
• Issuing entity: Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Hungarian National Bank)
• Designers: Endre Horváth, Kálmán Moskó
• Engraver: Endre Horváth
• Issued: 15 January 1941
• Demonetized: 6 May 1946 — demonetized following the catastrophic Pengő hyperinflation
• Signatures: Gov. Lipót Baranyai, Mihály Koos, Richard Quandt
• Currency: Pengő (1927–1946) — replaced by the Forint in 1946 after one of the worst hyperinflations in recorded history
• References: P-109 | Adamo MBK2 P12

Design and Colors

This note is a masterwork of intaglio printing — the same technique used for the world's most secure banknotes — executed in a style that sits at the intersection of Art Nouveau naturalism and Hungarian folk romanticism.

Obverse (Front): The dominant color is a rich steel blue, applied in fine intaglio over a warm tan and light green guilloché underprint. The guilloché — an intricate engine-turned geometric pattern of interlocking rosettes and wave forms — serves both as a security feature and as a visual foundation that gives the note its characteristic warmth. Against this, the central vignette depicts a shepherd with his flock, rendered in fine cross-hatched engraving that creates subtle tonal gradations. The shepherd is shown in a relaxed pastoral pose, the sheep clustered at his feet in a composition that evokes the Hungarian Puszta — the great plain central to Magyar national identity. To the right, a portrait of a woman in traditional Hungarian folk costume dominates the note. Her embroidered blouse, headdress, and jewelry are rendered with extraordinary precision — each stitch of the embroidery suggested by the engraver's burin. The portrait style follows the historicist tradition of idealized national types, common in Central European banknote design of the 1920s–1940s. The lettering — HÚSZ PENGŐ and the bank name — is set in a classical serif typeface with formal proportions consistent with state currency. A warning inscription runs along the lower border in a smaller condensed serif.

Reverse (Back): The reverse shifts to a warmer palette — ochre, brown, and olive tones — with a central vignette of an old man and a young woman in conversation, again in folk costume. The composition is more intimate than the obverse: the two figures are shown close together, the generational contrast deliberate — a visual metaphor for the continuity of Hungarian rural tradition. The numeral 20 appears in large, bold sans-serif figures at the corners — a modernist touch that contrasts with the otherwise historicist aesthetic.

Artistic Style: The overall design language belongs to the National Romantic movement — a pan-European tendency in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to express national identity through idealized rural imagery, folk costume, and pre-industrial landscapes. In Hungary, this tradition was deeply tied to the Gödöllő artists' colony and the broader Hungarian Szecesszió (Secession) movement. The engraving technique — fine parallel lines, cross-hatching, and stippling — is characteristic of the Hungarian Banknote Printing Company tradition, which trained its engravers in the same academic methods used at the great European security printers of the era.

About Hungary

• Capital: Budapest (city pop. ~1.7 million; metro ~3.3 million)
• Population: ~9.6 million (UN 2024) — similar to Sweden or New Jersey
• Area: 93,028 km² (35,918 mi²)
• GDP per capita at PPP: ~$43,000 USD (IMF 2024) — ranks ~45th out of 193 globally
• Main exports: Vehicles and parts, machinery, electronics, pharmaceuticals, food products
• Borders: Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia
• Official/spoken language: Hungarian (~100% of population)
• Sovereignty:
  • Pannonia — Roman province (1st century AD–433); before Rome, home to Celtic and Illyrian tribes
  • Hunnic Empire (433–469) — Huns arrived from the Eurasian steppe under Attila; empire collapsed after his death
  • Germanic and Avar kingdoms (469–895)
  • Magyar conquest (895) — Magyars from the Ural region, arrived under Árpád, displacing/absorbing Slavs and Avars
  • Kingdom of Hungary (1000–1526) — founded by Stephen I, ruling Transylvania, Croatia, Dalmatia, Slovakia, Transcarpathia, and Vojvodina
  • Battle of Mohács (1526) — Ottoman victory; Hungary split into Ottoman-occupied central Hungary, semi-autonomous Transylvania, and Royal Hungary under the Habsburgs
  • Habsburg rule (1526–1867) — Ottomans expelled by 1699; Hungary subject to Vienna
  • Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy (1867–1918) — Hungary co-equal partner with Austria, ruling a vast multi-ethnic empire
  • Horthy Regency (1920–1944) — this note issued during this period
    • Treaty of Trianon (1920) — Hungary lost ~72% of its territory and ~64% of its population: Transylvania to Romania; Slovakia and Transcarpathia to Czechoslovakia; Vojvodina to Yugoslavia; Croatia-Slavonia and Dalmatia to Yugoslavia and Italy; Burgenland to Austria
  • Arrow Cross / German occupation (1944–1945)
  • "People's Republic" (1949–1989) — communist dictatorship, Soviet satellite state; USSR crushed the 1956 uprising
  • Republic (1989–date)

A Pastoral Scene Printed in the Shadow of War

January 1941. Hungary had just signed the Tripartite Pact, aligning itself with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Within months it would join the invasion of Yugoslavia. And yet the Magyar Nemzeti Bank issued this note — a shepherd with his flock, a woman in embroidered national dress, an old man and a young woman in quiet conversation. The imagery is deliberately timeless, rooted in the Hungarian countryside rather than the chaos engulfing Europe.

The note was engraved by Endre Horváth, one of Hungary's most accomplished banknote artists, whose fine intaglio work gives the figures a warmth and depth rarely seen in wartime currency. The guilloché underprint in tan and green anchors the blue portrait in a composition that feels more like a museum print than a circulating banknote.

Six Languages on the Back: A Political Statement, Not a Courtesy

Look closely at the reverse. The denomination is printed in six languages — Hungarian, German, Slovak, Romanian, Rusyn, and Serbian. This was not a gesture of multicultural goodwill. By 1941, Trianon had stripped Hungary of two-thirds of its territory, and speakers of those minority languages were largely gone from what remained. The six languages were a political claim — printed proof that Hungary had never accepted the loss of Slovakia, Transylvania, Subcarpathian Ruthenia, and Vojvodina.

And by January 1941, that claim had already been partially vindicated. The First Vienna Award (November 1938) had returned southern Slovakia. Hungary had occupied the Czechoslovak Rusyn-speaking area Transcarpathia in March 1939 (now part of Ukraine). The Second Vienna Award (August 1940) had returned northern Transylvania where the most Hungarian speakers lived, but also many Romanian speakers. This note was printed into a Hungary that was actively governing those recovered populations. The six languages weren't nostalgia — they were current political reality, and a signal of what Budapest still wanted back.

The Pengő's Catastrophic End

This note was demonetized on 6 May 1946 — not because the war ended, but because the Pengő had ceased to function as money. Hungary's post-war hyperinflation remains the worst in recorded human history. At its peak in July 1946, prices were doubling every 15 hours. The government was printing 100 quintillion Pengő notes. The 20 Pengő you are holding here — worth a day's wages in 1941 — was worth less than a grain of sand by the time it was pulled from circulation.

The Forint replaced it at a rate of 400,000 quadrillion Pengő to 1 Forint. That number is not a typo.

Own This Document of Hungary, Before the Flood

This is Hungary in 1941 — prosperous enough to commission beautiful currency, nationalist enough to put folk costume and irredentist language claims on its banknotes, and four years away from total collapse. The shepherd on the front had no idea what was coming. Neither did anyone else.

A Very Fine example: well-circulated, honest wear, the imagery still crisp and the colors still vivid. A genuine artifact of the Horthy era, priced for the collector who wants history in hand, not behind glass.