100 000 Mark

Cologne's municipal administration issued emergency currency — Notgeld — during the hyperinflationary crisis of 1923, when the Reichsmark's collapse made denominations like this 100,000 Mark note necessary just to conduct ordinary commerce. M. Dumont Schauberg, a Cologne-based publishing house with roots in the city's press trade going back to the eighteenth century, handled the printing locally — a practical choice when transport costs and supply chains were themselves destabilized by the inflation.

The signature line reading "Der Oberbürgermeister" reflects the legal fiction that municipal authorities had the standing to issue currency at all — a concession Berlin made to practical necessity rather than constitutional principle.