5 000 000 000 Mark

Barmen issued this five-billion mark note in late 1923 at the absolute peak of the Weimar hyperinflation, when municipal governments across Germany were authorised to print their own emergency currency — Notgeld — simply to keep commercial transactions moving. By November 1923, the Reichsmark had collapsed so completely that a single US dollar was worth over four trillion of them, and denominations like this one were not an exaggeration but a daily practical necessity.

Aug. Schmidtmann Söhne were a local Barmen printing firm pressed into monetary production alongside their ordinary commercial work. Barmen itself was absorbed into the newly consolidated city of Wuppertal in 1929, which makes this note one of the last municipal issues under that name.