100 000 Mark

Waldshut sits on the Rhine directly across from the Swiss town of Tiengen — now merged into a single municipality — and in 1923 its proximity to Switzerland created unusual pressure on local emergency currency. Swiss francs were actively preferred by residents for everyday transactions, which forced municipalities throughout the border region to issue notgeld in higher denominations faster than inland towns simply to keep any paper in circulation at all.

P. Zimmermann was a local printer, not a specialist currency house. The 100,000 Mark denomination places this firmly in the hyperinflationary peak of mid-1923, when that figure represented a loaf of bread, briefly, before the rate accelerated further.