500 000 Mark

Heilbronn issued this note at the height of the hyperinflation summer of 1923, when municipal governments across Germany were forced into emergency currency production simply to meet payroll. The Stadtgemeinde — the city municipality itself, not a bank — became a de facto issuer out of necessity, a situation that would have been unthinkable eighteen months earlier.

Carl Reinbold was a local commercial printer, not a banknote specialist, which places this squarely in the Notgeld tradition of expedient local production. At 500,000 Mark, it was a significant denomination when printed; within weeks, it was effectively worthless as the Reichsbank's printing presses pushed inflation past any rational anchor.