100 000 000 Mark

Lahr's 100-million Mark note dates to the peak of the German hyperinflation, a period in which municipal and commercial entities across the country were legally permitted — indeed, effectively compelled — to issue their own emergency currency, or Notgeld, because the Reichsbank simply could not print and distribute sufficient legal tender fast enough to keep pace with collapsing purchasing power. By August and September 1923, denominations that had seemed absurd only weeks earlier were already obsolete on arrival.

Lahr was a mid-sized Baden textile and printing town, and this note was almost certainly produced locally — the regional printing infrastructure was well developed. The 100-million Mark face value, unthinkable a year prior, was itself overtaken by billion- and trillion-Mark issues within weeks of this note's release.