100 000 Mark Bergbau-Aktien-Gesellschaft Lothringen

Bergbau-AG Lothringen was one of the Ruhr coal operations that issued its own emergency currency during the hyperinflation peak of 1923 — a direct consequence of the French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr in January of that year, which disrupted normal banking channels and created acute demand for small-denomination substitutes at the colliery level. This note originates from the Lothringen colliery at Gerthe, near Bochum, where the shaft had been sunk in the 1870s and which remained a significant producing pit through the Weimar period.

Notgeld issued by individual mining companies is among the more historically grounded emergency currency of the inflation era — wages had to be paid, and the Reichsbank simply could not keep pace with denomination requirements.