1 000 000 Mark

Stadt Erfurt issued this one-million Mark note during the summer of 1923, when German municipal authorities were forced to print their own emergency currency — Notgeld — simply to meet payroll. The Reichsbank could not keep pace with demand as hyperinflation erased purchasing power faster than notes could be shipped from central printing facilities. Local printers like the Ohlenroth'sche Buchdruckerei stepped in by necessity, not design.

By the time this denomination made sense to print, a million marks bought roughly what a handful of pfennigs had bought two years earlier. Within weeks of issue, it would have been inadequate for a loaf of bread.