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20 Heller
| Issuer | Stadtgemeinde Grein (Municipality of Grein) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1920 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | Green-tinted notgeld voucher with a meander-pattern border frame. To the left, a circular vignette bears the heraldic town seal of Grein, showing a coat of arms with figures in a boat on a river, surrounded by a Latin legend. To the right, the denomination numeral '20' is printed in large bold type above the issuing authority text, with a facsimile signature of the mayor below. |
|---|---|
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| Signature(s) | Joh. Gürtler |
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| Comments |
Grein is a small market town on the Danube in Upper Austria, and like hundreds of Austrian municipalities after World War I, it resorted to printing its own Notgeld when coinage effectively disappeared from circulation. The postwar metal shortage was severe enough that even low-denomination transactions became impossible without these locally issued substitutes. Stadtgemeinde Grein's 1920 issues fall squarely into this wave of municipal emergency money — practical, unglamorous, and produced in quantity.
The single signature, Joh. Gürtler, most likely represents the town mayor or a senior municipal official authorized to validate the issue. Notgeld of this type carried genuine local accountability — the issuing municipality was legally obligated to redeem them, a requirement that made some towns more cautious about overprinting than others.