1 000 000 Mark

Stettin's municipal treasury issued this million-mark note at the peak of the Weimar hyperinflation, when German cities, towns, and private firms were printing their own emergency currency — Notgeld — because the Reichsbank simply could not supply denominations large enough for daily transactions fast enough. By mid-1923, a single loaf of bread could cost hundreds of thousands of marks, and the gap between official supply and commercial reality was filled by thousands of local issuers exactly like the Städtische Kämmereikasse.

Printed locally by F. Hessenland in Stettin rather than contracted to one of the major Leipzig or Berlin security printers, the note bears the countersignatures of the Oberbürgermeister and the Stadtkämmerer — a formality meant to confer municipal authority on what was, in practical terms, a document already obsolete almost the moment it was signed.