10 Heller Wachau - Spitz an der Donau

Spitz an der Donau was one of hundreds of Austrian municipalities forced to print their own small-denomination emergency money — Notgeld — after the collapse of the Habsburg economy left a chronic shortage of coin in everyday circulation. This 10 Heller piece belongs to the Wachau series, a regionally themed issue that gave local Notgeld an unusual degree of artistic ambition. The designer, a painter identified as Grausgruber and based in nearby Stein an der Donau, brought a genuine illustrative sensibility to what was otherwise a purely functional stopgap currency.

Eduard Sieger's Vienna print shop handled the production. The "IIc" suffix in the Jaksch reference indicates a specific paper or color variant within the series — collectors of Austrian Notgeld track these closely, as production runs were small and variants genuinely scarce.