5 000 000 Mark Landkreis Bochum

Issued by the rural district committee surrounding — but administratively distinct from — the city of Bochum, this note belongs to the most chaotic phase of Weimar hyperinflation, when municipal and county authorities across Germany printed their own emergency currency simply to meet payroll. By the time denominations reached the millions, the Reichsbank's supply chain had completely collapsed under the volume required, and local Notgeld ceased to be the stopgap measure it had been in 1921 and became the primary means of paying workers in the industrial Ruhr.

The Landkreis Bochum itself was a coal and steel district under French and Belgian occupation during much of 1923, following the Ruhr invasion of January that year — a pressure that accelerated local currency fragmentation well beyond what hyperinflation alone would have produced.