100 000 000 000 Mark Krupp

Krupp was one of dozens of major German industrial firms authorized to issue emergency currency — Notgeld — during the hyperinflation of 1923, when the Reichsbank simply could not print fast enough to meet demand. By October of that year, when this note's denomination was printed, one hundred billion marks was roughly the cost of a loaf of bread. The firm issued these notes primarily to pay its own workers, who needed to spend them the same day they were received before the value evaporated further.

Industrial Notgeld of this denomination is among the more sought-after surviving artifacts of Weimar-era monetary collapse — not for rarity, but because the issuer is so directly implicated in the economic and political convulsions of the period.