20 Reichsmark

Stuttgart's municipal government issued this note in 1945 as part of a wave of locally produced emergency currency — Notgeld — that appeared across German cities in the final weeks of the war and immediately after. American forces entered Stuttgart on April 22, 1945, and French occupation followed within days; notes like this one existed in a genuinely uncertain legal space, issued by a civilian administration whose authority was rapidly being superseded by Allied military government currency.

Municipal Notgeld of this type was typically authorized for only a brief window before Allied Military Marks and later occupation currency displaced it. Surviving examples in circulated grades are not uncommon, but unissued remainder stocks were largely destroyed during administrative handovers.