1 000 000 Mark on 500 Mark

Berlin's city treasury resorted to overprinting existing 500 Mark stock rather than waiting for fresh printing during the hyperinflationary spiral of 1922 — a practical stopgap as the Reichsbank struggled to keep denominations remotely useful. The base note's face value had become economically meaningless before the ink was dry on the overprint.

Municipal notgeld at this denomination level occupies an unusual position: technically emergency money, but issued by a civic authority large enough that its paper carried genuine local credibility. Berlin's Stadtkasse was not a provincial backwater improvising — this was the capital managing a crisis with whatever materials were at hand.