10 000 000 000 Mark

Eickel was a small administrative district within the Ruhr industrial belt, and this note belongs to the extraordinary wave of Notgeld issued during the hyperinflation peak of late 1923 — when municipal offices, factory payrolls, and even individual businesses were authorized to print emergency money simply to keep workers paid in denominations that matched the collapsing purchasing power of the Reichsmark. Ten billion marks on a single note from a district office that most Germans outside Westphalia couldn't locate on a map.

The Haßmann signature identifies the issuing Amtmann — the senior administrative officer — whose personal authorization gave the note its nominal legal standing at the local level. Whether it retained any value by the time it reached a shop counter was a different matter entirely.