50 000 Mark

Stettin's municipal treasury issued this note at the height of the Weimar hyperinflation, when the Reichsbank's inability to print fast enough forced hundreds of German cities and towns to issue their own emergency currency — Notgeld — to keep commerce moving. By mid-1923, 50,000 Mark was barely enough for daily transactions; within weeks of notes like this entering circulation, the denomination was already obsolete.

M. Bauchwitz was a Stettin-based printer, not a specialist security printer, which is exactly the point — municipal authorities were contracting whoever was local and available. Stettin itself would become Szczecin, Poland, in 1945.