10 000 000 Mark Gewerkschaft Emscher-Lippe

Gewerkschaft Emscher-Lippe was a coal-mining syndicate operating in the Datteln area of the Ruhr, and like hundreds of industrial firms during the hyperinflation of 1923, it issued its own emergency currency — Notgeld — to pay workers when the Reichsbank simply could not supply enough physical banknotes to meet payroll. The pace of inflation was such that denominations escalated from thousands to millions to billions within months; a 10,000,000 Mark note, extraordinary by any earlier standard, was routine tender by mid-1923.

Mining company Notgeld from this period was often printed locally and quickly, with little attention to security features. Survival rates vary considerably by issuer.