1 000 000 Ruhrtaler Propaganda banknotes

These are not genuine banknotes but deliberate propaganda fabrications, almost certainly produced during the French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr in 1923. The occupation, which began in January of that year after Germany defaulted on reparations payments, triggered a German government-sponsored campaign of passive resistance — and a flood of unofficial printed material intended to humiliate or undermine the occupying forces.

The denomination itself is the point. One million marks meant almost nothing by mid-1923; hyperinflation had rendered the figure absurd, and printing it on a fake note was a sardonic joke about both the occupation and the collapsing currency simultaneously. Whether distributed as street propaganda, sold as novelties, or used in organized resistance leafleting is not uniformly documented across surviving examples.

No central issuing authority. No redemption value. Collector interest sits entirely in the political moment that made them possible.