500 000 Mark Riedlingen; Gewerbebank

Riedlingen is a small market town on the upper Danube in Württemberg, and the Gewerbebank there — a cooperative trade bank — was among hundreds of local institutions that issued notgeld during the 1923 hyperinflation when Reichsbank currency became functionally worthless faster than it could be printed and distributed. At 500,000 Mark, this note was already obsolete within weeks of issue; by November 1923, a single US dollar exchanged for over four trillion marks.

Local printing in a town this size almost certainly meant a commercial job printer rather than a specialist security press — quality control and paper consistency vary noticeably across surviving examples of Württemberg provincial notgeld from this period.