500 000 Mark

Chemnitz was one of Saxony's principal industrial centers, and by mid-1923 its municipal government — like hundreds of other German local authorities — had no choice but to issue its own emergency currency. The Reichsbank simply could not print fast enough to keep pace with hyperinflation. These municipal Notgeld issues at the 500,000 Mark level cluster tightly in the summer of 1923, before the denomination spiral pushed into the billions and trillions within weeks.

The issuer here is the full civic body — both the Rat and the Stadtverordnete, the executive council and the elected assembly — a dual-authority signature that was fairly unusual and reflected Chemnitz's particular administrative structure.