500 000 Mark

Weilburg is a small town on the Lahn river in Hesse-Nassau, and like hundreds of German municipalities in 1923, its city treasury issued emergency paper — Notgeld — because Reichsbank notes were arriving too slowly to keep pace with hyperinflation that was, by mid-year, doubling prices every few days. The 500,000 Mark denomination, which would have seemed grotesque twelve months earlier, was already borderline inadequate by the time these notes reached circulation.

Scharfes Druckereien in Wetzlar handled a considerable volume of municipal Notgeld for towns throughout the region, which means this note was almost certainly a quick commercial job — short print run, local distribution, brief useful life before the denomination was eclipsed by billions and trillions.