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1 000 000 Marks
| Issuer | Stadtkasse Bad Ems (City Treasury of Bad Ems) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
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| Size | 152 x 82 mm |
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| Obverse description | Typeset note with a guilloche-bordered numeral panel at left displaying '1.000.000' in bold black figures over a light underprint. The right panel, framed by a decorative border with star corner ornaments, carries the issuer title 'Stadt Bad Ems' in Gothic blackletter, the denomination 'Eine Million Mark' in large display type, redemption text, issue date 15 August 1923, a red circular municipal seal, and a manuscript signature under 'Der Magistrat:'. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | Stadt Bad Ems 1 000 000 Eine Million Mark BAD EMS. Altes Bad nach einem Kupferstich vom Jahre 1676. |
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| Comments |
Bad Ems was better known in 1923 as a fashionable Rhine spa town than as an emergency currency issuer, but the hyperinflationary collapse of the Reichsmark forced even minor municipalities to print their own notgeld to meet payroll and local commerce. By August 1923, when million-mark denominations became necessary for everyday transactions, the Stadtkasse was issuing paper that would have been unimaginable a year earlier.
The DeNG reference places this within the documented Großgeldschein series — the large-denomination emergency notes catalogued by district. Survival rates for these provincial hyperinflation pieces vary sharply; many were redeemed quickly and pulped, while others were kept as curiosities almost immediately, since even contemporary Germans recognized they were living through something historically grotesque.