2 000 000 Mark Mitteldeutsches Braunkohlen-Syndikat

The Mitteldeutsches Braunkohlen-Syndikat — the central marketing cartel for brown coal producers across the middle German mining district — issued notgeld during the hyperinflation of 1923 as a practical necessity, not a speculative venture. By the time 2,000,000 Mark denominations became routine, the cartel was essentially running a parallel payroll currency for its workforce in the Halle-Merseburg coalfields, where normal banking channels had collapsed under the velocity of price increases.

The show-through print security feature — a registered front-to-back alignment producing a visible pattern when held to light — was a deliberate attempt by industrial issuers to limit counterfeiting of their own emergency scrip, which says something about how seriously this currency was being taken at street level.