2 000 000 Mark Staatliche Kreditanstalt

The Staatliche Kreditanstalt Oldenburg was a regional state credit institution, not a central bank, yet like dozens of German municipal and regional bodies in 1923 it was authorized to issue notgeld as the Reichsbank lost all capacity to supply usable currency during the hyperinflation peak. By the time denominations in the millions became necessary — mid-1923 — the printing presses were running continuous shifts just to keep pace with purchasing power collapsing faster than ink could dry.

Gerhard Stalling was a long-established Oldenburg printing house, which gave this issue a local coherence unusual for the period. The official stamp serves as the primary security feature, a telling sign of how rudimentary authentication had become when speed of production outweighed everything else.