100 000 000 Mark Rheinische Stahlwerke

Rheinische Stahlwerke was one of the major Ruhr steel producers whose operations were directly disrupted by the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr in January 1923. Like dozens of other industrial firms during the hyperinflation peak, the company issued its own notgeld to pay workers when Reichsbank currency was arriving too slowly and depreciating too fast to be useful. The 100-million mark denomination places this note firmly in the autumn 1923 acceleration, when even that figure represented only a few days' worth of purchasing power.

The watermarked paper is an unusually deliberate security measure for industrial emergency currency — most Ruhr notgeld of this period was printed on whatever stock was available.