2 Mark Straßenbahn Berlin, Issue 4 - Berliner Pferdeeisenbahn

Berlin's horse-tram network — the Pferdeeisenbahn — was one of the oldest urban transit systems in German-speaking Europe, but by 1922 it was a ghost of itself, having been converted to electric operation decades earlier. This fourth-issue Straßenbahn note was emergency scrip, part of the vast Notgeld flood that municipalities, transit operators, and utilities resorted to as Reichsbank currency became practically worthless during the hyperinflationary spiral. The Magistrat issued it to keep trams running when wage payments and change-making had become logistically impossible with official denominations.

Transit Notgeld from Berlin in this period tends to survive in higher quantities than rural issues — large print runs, urban distribution — but the fourth issue specifically circulated hard and degraded accordingly.