1 000 000 Mark Kreis Schleswig

During the hyperinflation peak of 1923, German district authorities — Kreise — were legally empowered to issue their own emergency currency, Notgeld, when the Reichsbank could no longer supply adequate denominations fast enough to keep pace with collapsing purchasing power. The Kreisausschuß des Kreises Schleswig was one of hundreds of such bodies printing locally to fill that gap. A million marks, unthinkable just two years earlier, was by mid-1923 barely enough for a loaf of bread.

L. Handorff of Kiel handled both design and printing — a regional commercial printer pressed into monetary service, not a specialist security press.