1 000 000 000 Mark

Hamburg's Finanzdeputation issued this billion-Mark note at the absolute peak of the Weimar hyperinflation spiral — by late 1923, the Reichsmark had collapsed so completely that municipal and regional authorities across Germany were printing their own emergency currency, Notgeld, simply to keep commerce moving. A milliard Mark note that would have been unthinkable twelve months earlier was, by August or September 1923, barely sufficient for a tram fare.

Broschek & Co. was a Hamburg commercial printing house, not a security printer, and the haste of production under inflationary pressure shows in the relatively simple typography-driven design these issues typically relied on.