1 000 000 000 Mark

Elberfeld was an industrial city in the Wupper valley — absorbed into the new city of Wuppertal in 1929 — and like hundreds of German municipalities in late 1923, it was forced to issue its own emergency currency simply to meet payroll. The Reichsbank's printing operations had collapsed so completely under hyperinflation that local authorities, private firms, and even individual factories were legally permitted to issue Notgeld denominated in the billions. A one-billion-mark note was not a curiosity in October 1923; it was roughly the cost of a loaf of bread.

Municipal issues from this period were typically printed on whatever stock was locally available, often on single-sided or roughly lithographed sheets. Elberfeld's noted printer resources in the textile trade district meant short-run jobs were turned around quickly but without the security features of a central bank issue.