5 000 000 Mark

Bergedorf, now a district of Hamburg, was still an independent municipality in 1923 and issued its own notgeld like hundreds of German towns scrambling to keep commerce functional during the hyperinflation collapse. The five-million-mark denomination places this note squarely in the late summer–autumn phase of the crisis, when the Reichsbank's printing capacity had become so overwhelmed that local authorities, private firms, and even railway operators issued emergency currency as a matter of survival, not policy.

Municipal issues from small towns like Bergedorf were rarely printed in large quantities and circulated only within tight geographic limits, which means surviving examples often show concentrated wear patterns — heavy folds from counter use, minimal edge damage — rather than the broad attrition of widely distributed national currency.