2 000 000 Mark

Cologne's 2,000,000 Mark Notgeld was signed by Konrad Adenauer in his capacity as Oberbürgermeister — a role he held from 1917 until the French occupation authorities removed him in 1926. The signature here is not ceremonial; municipal governments across the Rhineland were issuing emergency currency because the Reichsbank simply could not print fast enough to keep pace with hyperinflation. By the time notes at this denomination were entering circulation in mid-1923, the purchasing power of each one was already collapsing within days of issue.

J. P. Bachem was a Cologne-based Catholic publishing house with a long printing history — an unusual but not unprecedented choice for emergency currency production when specialist security printers were overwhelmed.