1 000 000 Mark Rheinisch-Westfälische Bauindustrie Aktien-Gesellschaft

Rheinisch-Westfälische Bauindustrie AG was a construction holding company, not a bank — yet like hundreds of German industrial firms in 1923, it was legally permitted to issue emergency currency (Notgeld) to pay its own workers when the Reichsbank could not supply physical notes fast enough to keep pace with hyperinflation. At the peak of the crisis, the gap between a worker receiving wages and those wages losing purchasing power was measured in hours, not days.

Linder & Longuich were a Düsseldorf commercial printer, pressed into monetary work by necessity rather than specialization. The million-mark denomination, staggering by any pre-war standard, was routine by mid-1923.