1 000 000 Mark Reichsbahndirektion

The German railway administrations — the Reichsbahndirektionen — issued their own emergency currency during the hyperinflation of 1923 because the Reichsbank simply could not print and distribute notes fast enough to meet demand. Stuttgart's directorate was among dozens of regional railway authorities that stepped in as quasi-monetary institutions, paying wages and covering operational costs with paper their own offices controlled. These were not sanctioned banknotes in any traditional sense; they were Notgeld backed by the credibility of a functioning rail network rather than a central reserve.

The watermarked paper distinguishes this issue from the cheapest emergency scrip of the period, suggesting at least some effort to deter forgery at a moment when a million marks was already a trivial sum rapidly losing whatever purchasing power it retained.