10 000 000 000 Mark Hilden

Hilden's ten-billion-mark note is a product of the hyperinflation peak of late 1923, when German municipal authorities were legally permitted — and practically forced — to issue their own emergency currency, Notgeld, simply to meet weekly payroll. By October of that year, the Reichsbank's own presses could not keep pace with the denomination spiral, and towns like Hilden filled the gap with locally commissioned paper.

Greven & Bechtold in Cologne were among the commercial printers who took on significant municipal Notgeld contracts during this period. The denomination itself marks a specific and narrow window: ten billion marks became functionally obsolete within weeks of issue, as the currency collapsed further before the Rentenmark stabilization in November 1923.