1 000 000 000 Mark

Düsseldorf was under French and Belgian military occupation when this note was issued — the Ruhr occupation had begun in January 1923, and the German government's policy of passive resistance, funding workers to strike rather than produce, was one of the accelerants that drove hyperinflation to its most extreme phase. Municipal authorities across the Rhineland were issuing notgeld in denominations that would have been unthinkable eighteen months earlier.

Hanns Herrendell, a local commercial artist, both designed and printed this note — an unusual degree of consolidated authorship for emergency currency. At one billion marks, it would have been worth almost nothing within days of issue.