10 Heller Kematen an der Krems

Austrian municipal notgeld of this period emerged from a genuine small-change crisis that persisted well after the First World War ended. The central authorities had failed to supply enough low-denomination coinage, so hundreds of individual communes — Kematen an der Krems among them — issued their own heller-denominated emergency paper in 1920 under authorization from the postwar Austrian government.

Kematen is a small municipality in Upper Austria on the Krems river, west of Linz. Its notgeld was almost certainly printed locally or regionally in small quantities, intended for purely domestic circulation within the commune's boundaries — which is why survival rates vary so sharply between issues from different villages in the same district.