500 000 Mark

Bruchsal's 500,000 Mark note was one of thousands of Notgeld issues flooding German commerce in mid-1923, when hyperinflation had accelerated so violently that municipal and private issuers were printing emergency denominations weekly simply to keep pace with the collapsing purchasing power of the Reichsmark. By the time notes in this range were circulating, the figure printed on them was already losing meaning before the ink dried.

Unusually, this note was printed locally by Heinrich Rudolf Schlüter A.G. — a Bruchsal firm — rather than outsourced to the major specialist presses in Berlin or Leipzig that were overwhelmed with Notgeld contracts that year. The dry seal was the city's primary anti-counterfeiting measure, modest by any standard, but counterfeiting high-denomination Notgeld was largely pointless given how rapidly even genuine notes depreciated.