500 000 Mark Lohnscheck

Mengen is a small town in the Swabian district of Sigmaringen, and like hundreds of German municipalities in 1923, it was forced to issue its own emergency wage notes — Lohnschecks — simply to meet payroll when Reichsbank currency arrived too slowly and in denominations too small to be useful. The half-million mark figure, which would have sounded absurd eighteen months earlier, was routine by mid-1923; by November it was pocket change.

The embossed municipal seal served as the primary authentication device, a low-cost solution that required no specialist printing equipment and could be applied by town hall staff directly.