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20 000 000 000 Mark Reichsbahndirektion
| Issuer | Reichsbahndirektion Altona |
|---|---|
| Year | 1923 |
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| Printer | Chr. Adolff, Altona-Ottensen, Germany |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | REICHSBAHNDIREKTION ALTONA GUTSCHEIN ÜBER MARK 20MILLIARDEN 20 MILLIARDEN ZWANZIG MILLIARDEN Dieser Gutschein wird bis zum 30. Nov. 1923 von allen Eisenbahnkassen des Reichsbahndirektionsbezirks in Zahlung genommen oder im Überweisungswege vergütet. Altona, 23. Oktober 1923 Chr. Adolff, Altona-Ottensen |
| Reverse description | The reverse is unprinted, showing plain off-white paper with ghost impressions of the obverse text visible through the sheet, characteristic of the lightweight emergency currency paper used during the German hyperinflationary period of 1923. |
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| Comments |
The Reichsbahndirektion Altona was the regional directorate of the German national railway administration, not a bank — and yet in October 1923 it was issuing its own emergency currency alongside thousands of other German entities scrambling to fill the void left by hyperinflation's total destruction of purchasing power. The Reichsbahn directorates had a practical justification most municipal issuers lacked: they needed to pay workers weekly, sometimes daily, in sums that required notes with face values that would have been incomprehensible eighteen months earlier.
Chr. Adolff was a local Altona printing firm, pressed into notgeld production like dozens of regional printers that year. The twenty billion mark denomination dates this note to the peak collapse period — by late November 1923, even these figures were obsolete.