100 000 000 000 Mark

Sterkrade was an industrial municipality in the Ruhr, administratively part of the Rhine Province, and it was precisely this region that bore the sharpest edge of the 1923 hyperinflation crisis — compounded by the French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr from January of that year, which paralyzed coal and steel production and triggered a campaign of passive resistance that the German government financed by printing money at catastrophic speed. Local authorities across the occupied zone were left to issue emergency Notgeld of their own because Reichsbank notes simply could not reach denominations fast enough to keep pace with daily price collapses.

A watermark on a municipal Notgeld issue at this denomination is worth noting — by autumn 1923, most local issuers had abandoned security features entirely as pointless overhead when a note's purchasing power evaporated within hours of printing.