1 000 000 000 Mark

Apolda is a small textile-manufacturing town in Thuringia, better known historically for its hosiery and bell-foundry industries than for its currency. During the hyperinflation of 1923, German municipalities were legally empowered to issue their own emergency notes — Notgeld — to compensate for the Reichsbank's inability to supply sufficient denominations fast enough. By the time a billion-mark denomination was necessary, the inflation had reached a point where even this note would have been functionally obsolete within days of printing.

Adolf Forker was a Leipzig commercial printer producing Notgeld for numerous Thuringian municipalities simultaneously during this period — not a specialist security printer.