100 000 Mark

Mülheim an der Ruhr was one of hundreds of German municipalities that took paper currency into their own hands during the hyperinflation of 1923, when the Reichsbank simply could not print fast enough to meet demand. These Notgeld issues were emergency instruments, authorised locally and redeemable — in theory — through the issuing town's treasury. By mid-1923, 100,000 Mark was already a trivial sum, worth less each day it sat unspent.

The watermarked paper suggests procurement from a commercial stationer rather than a specialist security printer — a detail that tells you something about the chaos of the period and the speed at which these notes had to be produced.