100 000 000 000 Mark

Kempten's hundred-billion-mark note dates from October or November 1923, the absolute peak of Weimar hyperinflation, when municipal and commercial authorities throughout Germany were authorized to issue their own emergency currency — Notgeld — simply because the Reichsbank could not print and distribute legal tender fast enough to keep pace with daily price increases. By that stage, a single U.S. dollar was worth roughly four billion marks, meaning this denomination bought embarrassingly little.

Printed locally by the Allgäuer Druckerei, with engraving credited to C. Voesenmayer. The watermarked paper was one of the few concessions to security on notes that were, by design, temporary — the Rentenmark stabilization arrived in mid-November 1923, rendering the entire series worthless within weeks of issue.