50 000 000 000 Mark

By late 1923, Germany's hyperinflation had forced municipal authorities into the currency business by necessity — the Reichsbank simply could not print fast enough. Trier's Notgeld issues were among hundreds of locally produced emergency denominations circulating simultaneously, each backed by nothing more reliable than the issuing municipality's word. At 50 billion Mark, this note represents the outer edge of that collapse: a denomination that would have been arithmetically unthinkable eighteen months earlier.

The watermarked paper is a minor point of interest — most emergency municipal issues dispensed with security features entirely. That Trierer Druckerei Gesellschaft incorporated one suggests either existing stock was used or there was still some pretense of formality at this stage of the crisis.