100 000 Mark Rheinische Stahlwerke

Rheinische Stahlwerke was one of the major integrated steel producers in the Ruhr, and like hundreds of German industrial firms in 1923, it issued its own emergency currency — Notgeld — to pay wages when the Reichsbank could no longer supply sufficient physical notes to meet payroll at hyperinflation-era denominations. This was not a banking instrument; it was an industrial payroll solution, printed under duress.

The Duisburg-Meiderich works sat at the heart of the occupied Ruhr, and 1923 was the year of the French and Belgian occupation. Whether this note circulated during or after the passive resistance period is difficult to establish, but the timing is inseparable from that political crisis.