5 000 000 000 Mark

Rastatt's five-billion mark note is a product of the catastrophic hyperinflation of late 1923, when German municipal authorities were compelled to issue their own emergency currency — Notgeld — simply to meet payroll and keep local commerce functional. By October of that year, the Reichsbank's printing capacity could not keep pace with the collapsing value of the mark, and towns across Baden scrambled to fill the void.

Local printer Greiser handled production entirely in Rastatt, which was unusual enough to be worth noting — many comparable municipal issues from this period were contracted out to larger commercial printers in Frankfurt or Leipzig. The watermarked paper suggests at least a nominal attempt at anti-counterfeiting measures, though at denominations this size, forgery was hardly the pressing concern.