100 Korona

The Magyar Állam's 100 Korona of 1920 was printed in Vienna despite Hungary having formally separated from Austria in the post-war settlement — a practical concession to the fact that the Österreichische Staatsdruckerei remained the only nearby facility capable of producing currency at the required quality and scale. The political awkwardness of this arrangement was considerable, given that the 1920 Treaty of Trianon had stripped Hungary of two-thirds of its territory and left its new government scrambling to establish independent institutions.

Koloman Moser, one of the founding figures of the Vienna Secession, had designed the underlying plate work before the war, which is why the aesthetic owes more to prewar Vienna than to Budapest. Schirnböck's engraving retains that Secessionist clarity in the line work.