10 Heller Rabensburg

Rabensburg is a small market town in Lower Austria near the Slovak border, and this 10 Heller note is a product of the Notgeld wave that swept Austrian municipalities after the First World War. The collapse of the Habsburg monetary system left local governments scrambling to produce small-denomination emergency currency to cover the chronic coin shortage of 1919–1920. Thousands of Austrian towns did exactly this, most printing through regional firms on whatever paper stock was available.

The mayor's signature — Johann Irscher — gives this note its only real authentication. No central bank stood behind it.