50 000 000 Mark

Cologne issued this note under the signature of Konrad Adenauer, then serving as Oberbürgermeister — a post he held from 1917 to 1933. During the hyperinflation of 1923, German municipalities were legally permitted to issue their own emergency currency, Notgeld, to compensate for the Reich's failure to supply adequate circulating money. By August of that year, the 50-million-Mark denomination had become routine, not remarkable.

M. Dumont Schauberg was a major Cologne commercial printer, not a security printing house — the pressures of 1923 left little room for selecting specialist printers.