500 000 Mark Reichsbahndirektion

The German railway administrations — Reichsbahndirektionen — became emergency money issuers during the hyperinflation of 1923 largely out of operational necessity. Wage payments to railway workers could not wait for central bank supplies to catch up with collapsing purchasing power, so regional directorates printed their own notgeld. The Altona directorate covered the Hamburg metropolitan rail network, and its staff would have seen the face value of this note rendered meaningless within weeks, sometimes days, of issue.

The watermark security feature is notable for notgeld of this class — many comparable railway issues dispensed with it entirely at this denomination, treating the notes as purely transient instruments.