500 000 Mark

Lennep is a small town in the Bergisches Land region of western Germany, today absorbed into Remscheid. Like hundreds of German municipal and district authorities in 1923, the Kreisausschuss — the district committee — was forced into issuing its own emergency currency as the Reichsbank's printing capacity collapsed under hyperinflation. By the time 500,000-Mark notes were being struck at the local level, that figure was losing purchasing power almost daily.

Notgeld of this denomination tier, issued in the summer and autumn of 1923, was typically in circulation for only days or weeks before becoming functionally worthless.