1 000 000 000 Mark

Gelsenkirchen's local authority issued this milliard-mark emergency note during the hyperinflationary peak of late 1923, when the Reichsbank could not produce currency fast enough to meet daily demand. Hundreds of German municipalities, districts, and private firms printed their own Notgeld at this stage — not as a novelty, as earlier small-denomination Notgeld had been, but out of raw necessity. Workers were being paid multiple times per day as purchasing power collapsed between morning and afternoon.

The Ruhr occupation by French and Belgian forces beginning January 1923 hit industrial Gelsenkirchen — a coal and steel hub — with particular severity, disrupting both production and payroll logistics simultaneously.