10 Heller Niederösterreich

Austrian provincial notgeld from the hyperinflationary breakdown of 1919–1922, when the central government could no longer guarantee coin supply and individual Länder, municipalities, and even businesses began issuing their own emergency fractional currency. Lower Austria — which at the time still administratively enclosed Vienna before the 1921 separation — was among the larger provincial issuers, and its notes were printed by Christoph Reisser's Söhne, a long-established Viennese commercial press rather than a specialist security printer.

Reisser's lack of intaglio capability is visible in surviving examples: the printing is flat lithography, with none of the tactile depth associated with contemporary banknote production. Counterfeiting such low-denomination notgeld was rarely worth the effort, which is presumably why the issuer didn't demand more.