5 000 000 000 Mark Handelskammer

Cassel's Chamber of Commerce resorted to its own emergency currency in 1923 because the Reichsbank simply could not print and distribute legal tender fast enough to keep pace with hyperinflation. By the time this five-billion-mark note was issued, the denomination had ceased to carry any meaningful purchasing power within weeks of printing — the collapse from millions to billions to trillions in Weimar notgeld happened across a matter of months in 1923.

H. Grünbaum was a local Cassel printer, not a specialist banknote house, which shows in the production. The Handelskammer notes were a functional stopgap, not a prestige issue.