500 000 000 Mark August-Thyssen-Hütte

August Thyssen-Hütte was one of the great Ruhr industrial combines, and like dozens of major German industrial employers in 1923, it printed its own emergency currency — Notgeld — to pay workers when Reichsbank notes simply could not keep pace with hyperinflation. The Gewerkschaft (mining association) structure gave it the legal standing to issue scrip redeemable within its own payroll system. Thyssendruck, the firm's in-house print operation at Hamborn, handled production, which kept the entire operation — design, printing, and distribution — within the company's walls.

The watermark security feature is notable given the inflationary velocity of late 1923, when a 500-million-Mark note had a useful life measured in days before its face value became effectively meaningless.