1 000 000 Mark

Barmen issued its own emergency currency — Notgeld — because the Reichsbank simply could not keep pace with the hyperinflationary spiral of 1923. By the time a million-mark denomination was necessary, the note's face value was already eroding within hours of issue. August Schmidtmann was a local commercial printer, not a security press, which is why these notes relied on an official municipal stamp rather than watermarks or embedded threads.

Barmen itself ceased to exist as an independent city in 1929, absorbed into the newly formed Wuppertal alongside Elberfeld and several smaller communes.