500 000 000 Mark Kreis Jülich

By late 1923, German hyperinflation had forced regional administrative bodies — Kreise, municipalities, chambers of commerce — to issue their own emergency currency simply to meet payroll. The Kreisausschuß des Kreises Jülich, the administrative committee of Jülich district, was one of hundreds of such bodies doing exactly that. At 500,000,000 Mark, this note represents the upper registers of that collapse: a denomination that would have been unimaginable eighteen months earlier.

Printed locally by Buchdruckerei Jos. Fischer — the same firm named in the signature block as "Dr. Fischer" — which raises the question of whether the printer and one of the authorizing signatories were the same individual or related parties. The watermarked paper was a concession to legitimacy in a note that few users would scrutinize for long.