500 000 Mark

Nürnberg's municipal administration — like dozens of German cities in 1923 — was forced to issue its own emergency currency as the Reichsbank's hyperinflationary spiral made centrally issued notes obsolete almost upon printing. This half-million Mark denomination, printed locally by E. Nister, reflects the summer-to-autumn acceleration: denominations that would have been unthinkable eighteen months earlier were now barely sufficient for daily transactions.

E. Nister was primarily a commercial printer and publisher, not a security printing house. That distinction matters — the notes were produced quickly, without the anti-counterfeiting infrastructure of specialist firms, because speed was the only thing that mattered.