5 000 000 Mark

Rheydt issued this note during the most violent phase of the German hyperinflation, when municipal and private emergency issuers — the Notgeld system — were producing denominations that would have seemed absurd even six months earlier. By mid-1923, five million marks was roughly enough for a loaf of bread, and often not even that by the time the note reached the baker's hand.

Otto Berger was a local Rheydt printer, not a specialist securities firm, which shows in notes from this series — registration on overprinted denominations can run slightly off-axis. The Oberbürgermeister's signature, unidentified in most catalog records, was almost certainly that of a city official managing an issuing authority that had no real monetary infrastructure and was improvising by the week.