500 000 000 Mark

Herne's municipal authority — the Magistrat — was one of hundreds of German local governments forced into emergency currency production during the hyperinflation peak of late 1923. By September of that year, the Reichsbank could not physically print and distribute notes fast enough to meet demand, so towns printed their own. This is notgeld in its most extreme form: not the decorative souvenir notgeld of 1920–21, but a functional emergency instrument pushed out under genuine monetary collapse.

Five hundred million marks. When this note was issued, that sum would buy roughly a loaf of bread — if the exchange rate held through the morning.