20 000 000 000 Mark

Überlingen's Gemeinderat authorized this 20-billion Mark note in the autumn of 1923, when Germany's hyperinflation had accelerated so far beyond any practical reckoning that municipal governments across Baden and the rest of the Reich were printing their own emergency Notgeld simply to meet payroll. The denomination itself is the story — twenty thousand million Mark, a figure that would have been economically incomprehensible just two years earlier.

W. Veit's local print shop handled production entirely in-house, which kept turnaround fast but quality modest. Designer V. Mezger is otherwise unknown outside this issue.