1 000 000 Mark

Gräfrath was a small textile town on the eastern edge of the Wupper valley — by 1923 barely a city in any meaningful sense, with a population well under ten thousand. Like hundreds of German municipalities that year, it issued its own emergency currency because the Reichsbank simply could not print fast enough to keep pace with hyperinflation. The million-mark denomination, which would have been unthinkable eighteen months earlier, was routine by mid-1923.

Walter Schreiber & Fey printed from nearby Solingen, which kept turnaround times short — critical when denominations were becoming obsolete within weeks of issue. The guilloche underprint was a nod toward anti-counterfeiting convention rather than a genuine deterrent; few bothered forging notgeld when the real thing depreciated faster than forgeries could circulate.