100 000 000 Mark Gewerkschaft Orange

Gewerkschaft Orange was a coal mining syndicate operating in the Ruhr, and like dozens of industrial firms during the hyperinflation of 1923, it issued its own emergency currency — Notgeld — to pay workers when the Reichsbank simply could not supply physical banknotes fast enough to keep pace with collapsing purchasing power. By the time denominations reached nine figures, wages were being calculated and paid on a daily or even hourly basis to prevent real losses between morning and afternoon shifts.

The watermarked paper suggests a degree of production quality unusual for late-stage inflation notgeld, where many issuers had abandoned any pretense of anti-counterfeiting measures entirely.