10 000 000 000 Mark

Göttingen's municipal administration, like hundreds of German cities in the autumn of 1923, was forced into the absurd position of printing its own emergency currency simply to meet weekly payrolls. The Reichsbank could not supply notes fast enough as hyperinflation destroyed purchasing power faster than presses could run. A ten-billion-mark denomination — unthinkable two years earlier — was by October 1923 barely sufficient for a loaf of bread, depending on the day it was spent.

The watermark is a notable detail for city-issued Notgeld of this period; most municipal issues at this frantic stage of the inflation dispensed with security features entirely.