10 000 000 000 Mark

Danzig's status as a Free City under League of Nations protection after 1920 left it exposed to Weimar-era inflation without the full backing of the Reichsbank. The city issued its own emergency currency — Notgeld — during the hyperinflationary crisis of 1923, and denominations escalated with brutal speed. The ten-billion-mark figure on this note reflects not recklessness but arithmetic necessity: by late 1923, a single tram fare in Germany required figures of this magnitude.

The Free City's currency arrangements were complicated by its political limbo between Germany and Poland, neither of which fully underwrote its monetary stability. Danzig would abandon the Mark entirely in late 1923, introducing the Danzig Gulden pegged to sterling — making notes like this one immediately obsolete upon issue.