10 Heller Maissau

Maissau is a small market town in Lower Austria's Weinviertel, and this 10 Heller note is one of the Notgeld issues produced locally during the severe coin shortage that gripped Austria in the immediate postwar period. Municipal and communal authorities across the country were authorized — or simply took it upon themselves — to print small-denomination emergency money when federal coinage had effectively vanished from everyday transactions.

Three signatures authenticate this particular issue: Vormündl, Topf, and Mader, almost certainly local officials rather than professional banking staff. The printing was handled in Maissau itself, which accounts for the characteristically modest production quality common to small-town Austrian Notgeld of this period.