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100 000 000 Mark
| Issuer | Stadtgemeinde Witten (City of Witten, Prussian province of Westphalia) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | Printed in green and red on plain white paper, the obverse carries an all-over geometric guilloche underprint of repeating oval and scroll motifs arranged in a regular grid, enclosed within a red foliate border. The denomination "Hundert Millionen Mark" is set in large blackletter (Fraktur) type at the top, with the body text — stating the payment obligation of the Stadthauptkasse in Witten — rendered in smaller Fraktur below, followed by the issue date "Witten, den 10. September 1923" and the authority line "Für die Stadtgemeinde Witten: Der Magistrat," beneath which two manuscript signatures appear. A vertical serial number runs along the left margin, with a small decorative emblem at its base. |
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| Reverse lettering | Stadt Witten |
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| Comments |
Witten's 100-million Mark note is a product of the absolute peak of the German hyperinflation — by August 1923, municipal and regional authorities across the Reich were printing their own emergency currency, Notgeld, because the Reichsbank simply could not produce denominations fast enough to keep pace with collapsing purchasing power. The Stadtgemeinde issued this through a local press rather than any central authority, a purely practical decision driven by logistics and desperation.
Aug. Pott's Märkische Druckerei was a regional commercial printer, not a security printing house. Whatever anti-counterfeiting measures exist on this note are incidental to its design, not engineered — by this point in the crisis, forgery was barely a concern worth addressing.