100 000 Mark

Stadt Düsseldorf was one of hundreds of German municipalities forced to issue their own emergency currency during the hyperinflationary spiral of 1923, when the Reichsbank simply could not print fast enough to meet demand. By the time 100,000-Mark notes were being issued at the municipal level, the denomination was already losing purchasing power within days of leaving the press — in some weeks, faster than that.

L. Schwann was a Düsseldorf-based commercial printer with an established reputation in lithographic work, not a specialist banknote printer. That distinction mattered little by mid-1923, when print quality had been subordinated entirely to speed of output.