10 Heller Pernau

Pernau is a small market town in Upper Austria, and this 10 Heller note is a product of the notgeld crisis that swept through the former Habsburg territories after 1918. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monetary system left municipalities scrambling to fill a severe coin shortage, and hundreds of small communities issued their own emergency paper. Karl Stimpfl designed the piece, and Karl Dusl of Wels handled production — a local printer for a genuinely local instrument.

The signature belongs to Josef Himmelfreundpointner, serving as Bürgermeister. That name, remarkable even by Austrian standards, appears on the face of every issued example.