10 000 000 Mark Oberamt Riedlingen

Riedlingen is a small Swabian district town on the upper Danube, and its Oberamtssparkasse was among hundreds of German savings institutions granted emergency authority to issue notgeld during the hyperinflation peak of 1923. By the time million-mark denominations had become routine, the 10,000,000-mark face value — staggering by any pre-war measure — was already struggling to cover a week's basic groceries. The watermark in the paper is one of the few concessions to anti-counterfeiting in a period when forgery was practically pointless anyway: the notes depreciated faster than a forger could pass them.