100 000 000 Mark August-Thyssen-Hütte

German industrial firms issued their own emergency currency during the hyperinflation of 1923 — Notgeld was legal in practice if not always in statute, and companies like the Thyssen steelworks needed to pay tens of thousands of workers when the Reichsbank simply could not supply sufficient notes. This 100-million-Mark denomination reflects the catastrophic velocity of inflation that summer: the figure that would have seemed surreal in January was routine by August.

Printed in-house at Thyssendruck, this is genuinely factory-made money — the same industrial complex that made the steel signed the paper. Both Fritz and Julius Thyssen appear as signatories, a rare instance of dynastic industrial authority made literal on a circulating instrument.