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100 000 000 Mark
| Issuer | Gemeinde Benrath (Municipality of Benrath) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
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| Printer | Greven & Bechtold, Köln, Germany |
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| Obverse description | Olive-grey note with an ornate scrollwork border framing the entire face. A large central oval guilloche vignette carries the denomination in Gothic Kurrent script. Below the oval, the municipal arms of Benrath — a crenellated tower above a shield charged with a lion and a zigzag device — are rendered in fine line engraving, with a serial number in the lower right field and the issuer's name 'Gemeinde Benrath' in bold script at the top. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse carries a detailed line-engraved architectural vignette of Benrath Palace (Schloss Benrath), a Baroque pleasure palace set amid trees, occupying the full upper portion of the note against an olive-grey underprint. The denomination '100.000.000' appears in large numerals at the top, flanked by star ornaments, while the lower portion bears a three-line redemption text in Kurrent script, dated Benrath 21. Sept. 1923, with a facsimile signature of the Bürgermeister. |
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| Comments |
Benrath was a small Rhine community absorbed into Düsseldorf in 1929, which makes its independent notgeld issues a narrow historical window. This 100-million Mark note dates to the peak inflationary spiral of autumn 1923, when the Reichsmark was collapsing so rapidly that municipalities across the Rhineland were forced to issue emergency currency just to meet weekly wage demands — the figure on this note, unimaginable months earlier, was routine by October.
Greven & Bechtold in Cologne handled a significant volume of Rhineland notgeld work during this period, printing for multiple municipalities simultaneously. The Bürgermeister signature of o.v. Custodis gives the note its local authority — and its expiry date, given that the Rentenmark stabilization of November 1923 rendered the entire denomination obsolete within weeks of printing.