100 000 Mark Ratingen

Ratingen's 100,000 Mark note dates to the summer of 1923, when hyperinflation was accelerating so rapidly that municipal authorities across Germany were forced to print emergency currency — Notgeld — simply to meet payroll and keep local commerce moving. By this point in the inflation spiral, the Reichsbank's own output could not keep pace with demand, and hundreds of German cities issued emergency denominations that would have been unthinkable twelve months earlier.

The single authorizing signature belongs to Scheiff, serving as Bürgermeister of Ratingen at the time. Small-city Notgeld of this denomination tends to survive in lower quantities than the heavily collected "Serienscheine" of earlier years — it was spending money, not a collector issue.