500 000 Mark

Schwelm is a small industrial town in the Bergisches Land, and its district committee — like hundreds of municipal and county authorities across Germany in 1923 — was forced into the notgeld business not by choice but by the complete failure of the Reichsbank to supply adequate circulating currency during the hyperinflationary collapse. The 500,000 Mark denomination, which would have seemed astronomically large just months earlier, was already losing practical purchasing power by the time issues at this level were rolling off presses.

August Schmidtmann in Barmen was a regional commercial printer, not a specialist currency house, which is characteristic of late-stage 1923 emergency issues — the dedicated notgeld printers were overwhelmed, and municipalities contracted whoever could turn work around quickly.