1 000 000 Mark

Hof an der Saale was among thousands of German municipalities forced to print their own emergency currency — Notgeld — during the hyperinflationary collapse of 1923, when the Reichsmark was losing value faster than the Reichsdruckerei could supply denominations large enough to be useful. By the time a million-mark note was necessary for ordinary transactions, the figure had ceased to mean anything to the people spending it.

Municipal issues like this one were authorized under a patchwork of emergency decrees and varied enormously in paper quality and printing. Hof's issues are competently produced but unremarkable within the broader Bavarian Notgeld output — the interest lies in the denomination itself, a number that would have been unimaginable in German daily commerce just two years prior.