25 Centimes – Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

In 1946, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg was navigating a complex post-war monetary landscape, fundamentally shaped by the Belgian-Luxembourg Economic Union (BLEU) established in 1921. This union meant that the Luxembourg franc was pegged at par to the Belgian franc, and Belgian banknotes were legal tender within Luxembourg. However, the war had severely disrupted this system. The German occupation (1940-1944) had forcibly replaced the franc with the Reichsmark, and the subsequent liberation brought a period of monetary confusion with Allied military currency and old Belgian notes circulating alongside new issues.

The immediate post-war priority was monetary stabilization and the reassertion of sovereign control. In 1944, the Luxembourg government introduced a new national franc, but its circulation was limited and it coexisted with the still-dominant Belgian franc. By 1946, the key challenge was not a unique Luxembourg currency crisis, but rather managing inflation and economic reconstruction within the constraints of the BLEU. Luxembourg's monetary policy was largely dictated by decisions made in Brussels, as the two countries worked to harmonize their post-war recovery, including a major devaluation of the Belgian (and thus Luxembourg) franc against the US dollar in December 1945 to boost exports.

Therefore, the currency situation in Luxembourg in 1946 was one of dependent stability. The country did not face hyperinflation or a collapsed independent currency, thanks to the BLEU framework which anchored its franc to Belgium's recovering economy. The focus was on using this stable, if externally influenced, monetary base to facilitate national reconstruction, rebuild shattered infrastructure, and restore industrial production, particularly in the vital steel sector, within a broader Benelux and European recovery context.