1 000 000 000 Mark Landesbank der Rheinprovinz

The Landesbank der Rheinprovinz was one of dozens of regional and municipal institutions that issued emergency Notgeld during the hyperinflation crisis of 1923, when the Reichsbank could not print fast enough to meet demand. By the time billion-mark denominations were necessary — and this note was already obsolete within weeks of issue — the inflation had become arithmetically absurd: a single loaf of bread in late 1923 cost more than Germany's entire national debt had been in 1913.

The Düsseldorf printing origin is consistent with the Landesbank's Rhine Province operations, which remained under French and Belgian occupation following the Ruhr crisis of January 1923. That occupation directly accelerated the currency collapse by severing Germany's industrial tax base at its most productive point.