500 000 Mark Messamt für die Mustermessen in Leipzig

The Messamt für die Mustermessen — the trade fair authority administering the Leipzig Sample Fair — issued notgeld in 1923 not out of civic obligation but commercial necessity. The hyperinflation consuming Germany that year made it impossible to pay workers, vendors, and contractors at the fair grounds without locally issued emergency currency. The Leipzig trade fair was, by this point, one of the most internationally significant commercial events in Central Europe, which gave the Messamt both the institutional standing and the practical incentive to print its own.

Half a million marks sounds extraordinary; by mid-1923 it barely covered a streetcar fare.