200 000 000 000 Mark Handelsverein

Bevensen was a small spa town in Lower Saxony, and like hundreds of German municipalities and local commercial bodies in late 1923, its Handelsverein found itself printing emergency currency simply to keep retail transactions functioning. The Reichsbank could not supply notes fast enough as hyperinflation accelerated through October and November of that year — at its peak, the exchange rate reached 4.2 trillion marks to the dollar, and denominations that seemed absurd in July were inadequate by September.

A face value of 200 billion marks on a note issued by a local merchants' association captures the administrative absurdity of that moment better than any monetary history textbook does.