10 Heller Erlauf im Nibelungengau

One of thousands of Austrian municipal emergency notes — Notgeld — issued in the chaotic period following the collapse of the Habsburg economy. Erlauf is a small market town on the Danube in Lower Austria, and like most issuing communities of this type, it printed these notes to address a genuine small-denomination coin shortage rather than any local banking ambition. The dual signature arrangement, with both Bürgermeister and Vizebürgermeister signing, was a deliberate legitimizing gesture — the town asserting institutional weight behind paper that had no legal tender status outside its own boundaries.