50 000 000 Mark

Winnenden is a small town in Württemberg, and its appearance in the notgeld record during the hyperinflation peak of 1923 is entirely typical of municipal emergency issues scrambling to fill the void left by worthless Reichsbank currency. By the time fifty-million-mark denominations were being printed at the local level, the Reichsbank itself had lost practical control of the money supply — municipal and commercial issuers were effectively running parallel monetary systems out of necessity.

The Stadtpflege — the city treasury office — served as the issuing authority rather than a bank, which was common in smaller Württemberg municipalities. Authentication relied entirely on an applied official stamp, a low-security solution that was broadly tolerated because forgery of hyperinflationary notgeld was rarely economically rational given how fast denominations were being superseded.