20 000 000 000 Mark Cloppenburg

Cloppenburg was a small administrative district in Lower Saxony with no particular monetary significance — which makes its entry into hyperinflation-era emergency currency entirely unremarkable and entirely typical of 1923 Germany. By the autumn of that year, municipal treasuries across the Reich were issuing their own Notgeld simply to meet payroll, as Reichsbank notes arrived already devalued before they could be distributed. The Stadtkasse, the town's own cash office rather than a private bank, was the issuing authority here — a sign of just how far down the administrative hierarchy the currency crisis had reached.

Twenty billion marks. A figure that would have been arithmetically inconceivable to the same municipal officials just four years earlier.