2 Millionen Mark, Reichsbanknote, 1923

By the summer of 1923 the German mark was collapsing by the hour. This note is dated Berlin, 9 August 1923, and promises that the Reichsbank main cashier will pay the bearer two million marks — a sum that a year earlier would have been a fortune and that within weeks of issue would not cover a loaf of bread. The Reichsbank could no longer design, engrave and proof notes at the pace prices demanded, so the printing works simply set larger and larger numbers in plain type.

The result is this stark, utilitarian piece: black text on a lightly tinted ground, the denomination spelled out as Zwei Millionen Mark, with the date and a series letter block (here K 17) doing the work that elaborate engraving once did. The reverse is blank — the note is uniface, printed on one side only, because there was neither time nor reason to decorate money with a life expectancy measured in days.

Issued by the Reichsbankdirektorium and printed by the Reichsdruckerei in Berlin, the note was formally demonetised on 5 July 1925, after the Rentenmark and then the Reichsmark had ended the inflation. Astronomical denominations like this were saved by the ton as curiosities of the catastrophe, which is why they remain among the commonest of all German notes.