10 000 000 Mark

Barmen issued its own emergency currency — Notgeld — because the Reichsbank simply could not print fast enough to keep pace with hyperinflation in 1923. By August of that year, municipal and commercial authorities across Germany were authorized to issue their own denominations, and the ten-million mark face value on this note reflects how rapidly purchasing power was collapsing: a figure that would have seemed fantastical in 1921 was barely sufficient for ordinary transactions within months of printing.

August Schmidtmann was a local Barmen printer, not a specialist security press. The watermarked paper provided minimal counterfeiting deterrence at a moment when the notes themselves became worthless before forgery was even worth attempting.