20 000 000 Mark Sobernheim

Sobernheim is a small town on the Nahe river in the Rhineland, and like hundreds of similarly sized German municipalities, it issued its own emergency currency during the hyperinflation of 1923 — not because it had monetary authority in any meaningful sense, but because the Reichsbank simply could not print and distribute legal tender fast enough to keep pace with collapsing purchasing power. By the time denominations like this 20-million-mark note were being issued, the figures had become almost satirical: the purchasing power implied by "20,000,000 Marks" in August or September 1923 could be wiped out within days by the next round of price increases.

Notgeld at this inflationary extreme was typically lithographed locally or regionally on short notice, which accounts for the wide variation in paper quality and print consistency found across surviving examples from small issuers like Sobernheim.