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5 000 000 000 Mark

Issuer Marktgemeinderat Dirlewang (Market Town Council of Dirlewang, Bavaria)
Year 1923
Type Local banknote
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Obverse description Firm white paper with navy blue letterpress printing; double border frame with text and denomination in black. Five-digit red serial number with asterisk to the right, and a vertical oval violet handstamp applied to the lower centre.
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Protection description Bogenkreuzmuster (arc-cross pattern), Keller#174
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Comments

Dirlewang is a village in Swabia — population then well under a thousand — and yet in late 1923 its municipal council was authorized to issue five billion marks on a single note. That figure, incomprehensible by any peacetime standard, was barely enough to cover a loaf of bread at the peak of the Weimar hyperinflation. The Marktgemeinderat had no printing infrastructure of its own; the job went to Jakob Niederhuber's press in the nearby market town of Mindelheim, a local commercial printer with no particular banknote pedigree.

The watermarked paper is the one concession to security on an issue that was, practically speaking, obsolete almost the moment it left the press.

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