50 000 000 000 Mark

Kreise Kreuznach und Meisenheim issued this note jointly with the Stadt Kreuznach during the hyperinflationary peak of autumn 1923, when the Reichsmark had collapsed so completely that local authorities across Germany were legally authorized — and practically compelled — to print their own emergency currency. The fifty-billion denomination places it squarely in the final, most deranged phase of that collapse: by November 1923, a single US dollar was exchangeable for over four trillion marks.

Local Notgeld at these denominations was typically printed on whatever paper stock was available and circulated only briefly before being rendered worthless by the next wave of inflation. The Rentenmark stabilization in November 1923 made notes like this one obsolete almost immediately after issue.