500 000 Mark

Bottrop, Gladbeck, and Osterfeld were neighboring Ruhr industrial towns that issued this note jointly during the hyperinflation peak of 1923 — a relatively unusual arrangement, since most Notgeld at this denomination level was issued by a single municipality or district authority acting alone. The tri-city cooperation almost certainly reflects shared administrative infrastructure and the practical difficulty of commissioning emergency currency fast enough to keep pace with collapsing purchasing power.

By mid-1923, 500,000 Mark was worth almost nothing before the ink dried.