100 000 000 000 Mark Reichsbahndirektion

By autumn 1923, Germany's hyperinflation had forced institutions outside the Reichsbank to issue their own emergency currency — Notgeld — simply to meet payroll. The Deutsche Reichsbahn was among the largest such issuers, with individual Reichsbahndirektionen authorized to print regionally. The Karlsruhe directorate's 100-billion-Mark note dates to the period when denominations were escalating so rapidly that notes of this face value had a useful life measured in days before becoming economically irrelevant.

Railway Notgeld from this period is often underappreciated relative to municipal issues, but the Reichsbahn series is historically significant precisely because it documents a state-owned enterprise managing its own monetary collapse in parallel with the federal government.