100 000 Mark

Karlsruhe was one of hundreds of German municipalities that issued their own emergency currency during the hyperinflationary spiral of 1923, when the Reichsbank simply could not print fast enough to keep pace with collapsing purchasing power. By the time a 100,000 Mark note reached the counter, its real value had often already halved. Wilhelm Schnarrenberger, a Baden regionalist painter with genuine credentials, was an unusual choice for this kind of rushed fiscal printing — his involvement suggests the city was at least making some effort at civic presentation rather than pure expediency.

The embossed dry stamp was the primary anti-counterfeiting measure, which says everything about how rudimentary Notgeld security had become by mid-1923.