2 000 000 000 Mark

Apolda's hyperinflation emergency notes from 1923 represent the Notgeld system at its most extreme — municipal authorities across Thuringia were printing their own currency simply to keep wages moving, since Reichsbank notes were arriving too slowly and depreciating too fast to be useful. By late 1923, two billion marks bought roughly what a few pfennigs had bought in 1914. Adolf Forker in Leipzig handled a significant volume of provincial Notgeld printing during this period, supplying multiple Thuringian municipalities as the currency collapsed.

The denomination itself is the story. Apolda, a town of perhaps 25,000 known primarily for its bell foundries and hosiery industry, was issuing notes in the billions.