1 000 000 Mark

Kehl sits directly on the Rhine opposite Strasbourg, and in 1923 that geography mattered enormously. The city had been under French occupation since 1919 as part of the Allied bridgehead provisions of Versailles, a separate administrative burden layered on top of the hyperinflation already dismembering the German economy. Local authorities across Germany were issuing their own emergency currency — Notgeld — because the Reichsbank simply could not supply denominations fast enough to keep pace with collapsing purchasing power.

By the time this million-mark note was printed, one million marks bought roughly what a few pfennigs had purchased four years earlier. The denomination was already obsolete within weeks of issue.