1 000 000 000 Mark Beuchen

Beuchen — a small municipality in the Ruhr region — issued this billion-Mark note at the absolute peak of Weimar hyperinflation in autumn 1923, when the Reichsmark was collapsing faster than the central government could print replacements. Local authorities across Germany were authorized to issue emergency currency (Notgeld) precisely because the Reichsbank could not supply denominations large enough for daily transactions. A loaf of bread cost billions by October of that year.

Gottlob Volkhardt'sche Druckerei was a regional commercial printer pressed into monetary production under conditions no printer's equipment was designed for. The note's existence is essentially a bureaucratic receipt for economic catastrophe, redeemable — in theory — against Reichsbank currency at face value until the Rentenmark stabilization ended the crisis in November 1923.