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1 000 000 000 Mark
| Issuer | Stadt Solingen (City of Solingen, Prussian Rhine Province) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
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| Printer | Kunstanstalt Hermann Rabitz, Solingen, Germany |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Printed in violet on a guilloche underprint composed of interlocking diamond frames with rosette corners. The year digits 1-9-2-3 occupy the four outer corners, while STADT SOLINGEN and MILLIARDE are inscribed centrally above and below a small vignette of crossed blades — a reference to Solingen's renowned cutlery industry. The anti-counterfeiting warning NACHAHMUNG STRAFBAR! appears at the foot. |
| Reverse lettering | Stadt Solingen 1 Milliarde 1923 Nachahmung strafbar ! (Translation: City of Solingen 1 Billion 1923 Imitation punishable!) |
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| Comments |
By August 1923, the German hyperinflation had so thoroughly destroyed purchasing power that municipal governments were printing their own emergency currency — Notgeld — simply to make payroll. Solingen, then as now a center of the German cutlery and blade industry, issued this one-billion Mark note through a local commercial printer rather than any financial institution. The Reichsbank had effectively lost control of the money supply months earlier.
Kunstanstalt Hermann Rabitz was a Solingen-based printing and graphics firm, not a security printer. That a city turned to a commercial art house for billion-mark denominations captures the administrative desperation of that autumn more precisely than any inflation statistic.