5 000 000 Mark

Sobernheim was a small town in the Nahe valley, and its municipal administration — like hundreds of comparable German localities — resorted to printing its own emergency currency when Reichsbank notes became functionally worthless during the hyperinflation of 1923. By the time a five-million Mark denomination made sense, the Reichsmark was losing value within hours of issue. The printer, Fr. Melsbach, was a local Bad Sobernheim firm with no specialization in security printing — which is entirely typical of Notgeld at this inflationary extreme, where speed of production mattered far more than forgery resistance.

The note's relatively large physical format for a municipal issue suggests it was produced on whatever stock Melsbach had available in mid-1923.