10 Heller Aschbach

One of thousands of Austrian municipal emergency notes — Notgeld — issued in the chaotic period following the collapse of the Habsburg economy. The national coinage shortage was severe enough that small market towns were legally permitted, briefly, to issue their own fractional paper currency. Aschbach, a small market commune in Lower Austria, contracted the local Amstetten printer F. Kielar for the job.

These hyper-local issues typically saw only weeks or months of genuine use before being redeemed and withdrawn. Survival is largely a function of whether the issuing commune bothered to collect them back.