5 000 000 Mark Bayerische Staatsbank

The Bayerische Staatsbank was one of several German regional institutions forced to issue emergency high-denomination notes during the hyperinflationary collapse of 1923. Bavaria maintained its own state banking apparatus separate from the Reichsbank, and the Staatsbank exercised that authority aggressively in the summer and autumn of that year as the mark shed value by the hour. The 5,000,000 Mark denomination, unthinkable two years earlier, had become effectively small change by October 1923, when the exchange rate briefly exceeded 10 billion marks to the dollar.

The watermark — relatively costly to implement during crisis printing — suggests this note was not pure Notgeld but an instrument the Staatsbank intended to treat with some institutional seriousness.