50 000 000 Mark

Lauffen am Neckar was a small Württemberg town of perhaps four thousand residents when it issued this 50-million-mark note in 1923 — one of hundreds of German municipalities forced into emergency currency production as Reichsbank notes became worthless faster than they could be printed. At the height of the hyperinflation that August and September, a loaf of bread could cost tens of millions of marks, which meant denominations like this one had a useful circulation life measured in days, sometimes hours.

Locally printed Notgeld at this denomination is inherently fragile: cheap paper, minimal security features, and heavy handling in a short window. Lauffen is better known as the birthplace of Friedrich Hölderlin, a fact the town's notgeld committee apparently did not exploit for design purposes.