100 Mark - Westfalen Annette v. Droste-Hülshoff

Westphalia's 1923 notgeld issue honored Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, the 19th-century poet born near Münster, at a moment when the Reichsmark had become functionally worthless. Provincial and municipal authorities across Germany were printing and striking emergency money not as commemoration but out of necessity — the central government had lost control of the currency entirely by mid-1923, with inflation doubling prices every few days. Aluminum was the practical choice: cheap, available, and irrelevant to speculators hoarding metal.

Droste-Hülshoff had died in 1848. Her face would later appear on the West German 20-Mark banknote issued in 1961.