Watermark incorporating the words `Zehn` and `ZEHN`, the numeral `10`, the text `Wiener Stadt Banco Zettel`, an imperial eagle, and a geometric pattern distributed across the paper
变体
P#A23a - Issued note
备注
The Wiener Stadt Banco was not a modern central bank but a municipal credit institution founded in 1706, originally to manage Vienna's civic debt. By the 1790s it had been issuing paper Gulden for decades, and the notes were theoretically backed by municipal revenues — a promise increasingly strained by Austria's expensive wars against Revolutionary France. The 1796 date places this note squarely within that fiscal pressure, as Habsburg finances were deteriorating rapidly ahead of the 1797 suspension of specie payments.
The watermark remains the primary security device, as it had been throughout the series — engraving sophistication was not where the Banco invested its anti-counterfeiting effort.
The Wiener Stadt Banco was not a modern central bank but a municipal credit institution founded in 1706, originally to manage Vienna's civic debt. By the 1790s it had been issuing paper Gulden for decades, and the notes were theoretically backed by municipal revenues — a promise increasingly strained by Austria's expensive wars against Revolutionary France. The 1796 date places this note squarely within that fiscal pressure, as Habsburg finances were deteriorating rapidly ahead of the 1797 suspension of specie payments.
The watermark remains the primary security device, as it had been throughout the series — engraving sophistication was not where the Banco invested its anti-counterfeiting effort.