500 000 000 Mark

By the time Dresden issued this 500-million-mark note in 1923, the Reichsbank had effectively lost control of the money supply, and municipal authorities across Germany were printing their own emergency currency — Notgeld — just to meet payroll. Dresden's city administration contracted Stengel & Co., a firm better known for its commercial art printing and postcard reproduction work, which was a telling sign of how far the pool of available printing capacity had been stretched.

The denomination itself marks a specific window: late September or October 1923, when hyperinflation was accelerating fast enough that notes of this face value became obsolete within days of issue.