10 000 000 000 Mark Tiengen

Tiengen's Stadtkasse issued this 10-billion Mark note at the absolute peak of Weimar hyperinflation, when municipal authorities across Germany were legally empowered to print their own emergency currency — Notgeld — because the Reichsbank simply could not produce denominations fast enough to keep pace with daily price collapses. J. Fr. Greiner was a local printer, not a security press, which is exactly the point: by late 1923 the distinction between a banknote and a locally printed receipt had effectively ceased to exist.

Tiengen, a small town in Baden near the Swiss border, circulated this alongside Swiss Francs in many daily transactions — the hard currency immediately next door made the absurdity of the denomination impossible to ignore.