500 000 Mark Klöckner-Werke

Klöckner-Werke was one of Germany's major industrial conglomerates — coal, steel, machinery — and like hundreds of other large employers during the hyperinflation of 1923, it issued its own emergency wages currency, or Notgeld, to pay workers when the Reichsbank simply could not supply enough physical banknotes to keep pace with collapsing purchasing power. At the height of the crisis, the money supply was doubling every few days, and the lag between printing and distribution made official currency functionally worthless before it reached workers' hands.

The Berlin-Rauxel designation places this issue in the Ruhr industrial belt, which had the additional misfortune of French and Belgian military occupation throughout most of 1923 — a factor that accelerated regional reliance on private industrial Notgeld well beyond what was seen elsewhere in Germany.