20 Heller

Alkoven is a small municipality in the Eferding district of Upper Austria, and this 20 Heller note is a product of the Notgeld wave that swept Austrian towns and villages following the economic collapse of the immediate postwar years. Municipal authorities across the former Habsburg lands issued their own emergency scrip between roughly 1919 and 1921 because the central supply of small-denomination coins had simply evaporated — hoarded, melted, or lost to wartime disruption.

Handler's design credit is unusually specific for a village-issue Notgeld; many comparable pieces from similarly small municipalities were produced anonymously by local printers.