20 Heller Au an der Donau

Au an der Donau is a small Upper Austrian municipality that, like hundreds of similar communes, resorted to printing its own fractional emergency currency after the post-WWI coin shortage left daily commerce functionally impossible. These Gemeinde-issued Heller notes — Austria's so-called Notgeld — were strictly local instruments, valid only within the issuing community and typically redeemable for a limited window before being voided. Three municipal signatures were required for this series: the Bürgermeister and both Vizebürgermeister, a formality that gave the paper a thin veneer of institutional authority.

Buchdruckerei Eane handled the printing — a local trade press, not a specialist security printer, which shows in the production quality typical of rural Austrian Notgeld of this period.