5 000 000 000 Mark

The Kreisgemeinde Pfalz — the district authority of the Palatinate — issued this note during the hyperinflationary peak of autumn 1923, when municipal and regional bodies across Germany were legally authorized to produce Notgeld to fill the void left by a central government unable to print reichsmarks fast enough to meet demand. Five billion marks sounds extraordinary; by November 1923 it was barely bus fare.

Speyer, on the Rhine, was the administrative seat of the Palatinate and the logical production point. The Palatinate was under French occupation at the time — part of the post-Versailles Rhineland settlement — and separatist movements were actively exploiting the chaos, briefly declaring an autonomous Palatine Republic in October 1923. Whether district officials issuing this note answered to Berlin or to the occupation authorities is not a clean question.