500 000 Mark Deutsch-Luxemburgische Bergwerks- und Hütten-AG

Deutsch-Luxemburgische Bergwerks- und Hütten-AG was one of the great Ruhr industrial conglomerates — a steel and mining giant that, like most German heavy industry, was forced to issue its own emergency currency during the hyperinflation of 1923. These notgeld instruments were not symbolic gestures; they were operational necessities, used to pay thousands of workers at a moment when the Reichsbank could not produce denominations fast enough to keep pace with collapsing purchasing power.

The 500,000 Mark denomination places this note squarely in the mid-1923 acceleration phase, before valuations tipped into the billions. By autumn that year, such figures were already obsolete within days of printing.