5 000 000 000 Mark Tiengen

Tiengen's Stadtkasse issued this five-billion Mark note during the hyperinflation peak of late 1923, when municipal and commercial bodies across Germany were printing emergency currency — Notgeld — simply to keep wages moving. At the height of the crisis, the Reichsbank could not produce denominations fast enough, so local authorities filled the gap with their own paper, often printed by whatever press was available in town. J. Fr. Greiner was exactly that: a local job printer pressed into monetary service.

Five billion Marks. Within weeks of issue, that figure was already obsolete.