100 000 Mark

Zwenkau is a small town south of Leipzig, and like hundreds of German municipalities in 1923, it issued its own emergency currency — Notgeld — when the Reichsbank simply could not supply enough physical notes to keep pace with hyperinflation. The 100,000 Mark denomination, which would have seemed unthinkable two years earlier, was already being overtaken by new printings in the millions and billions by autumn of that year. Local girokassen, essentially municipal giro payment offices, were given authority to issue these notes to meet immediate payroll and retail demand.

Locally printed Notgeld of this period frequently shows inconsistent ink coverage and uneven impression — a function of using commercial job printers not equipped for currency work, not a defect specific to individual notes.