20 Heller Frankenburg

Frankenburg am Hausruck issued these small-denomination Heller notes in 1920 as part of the broader Austrian Notgeld phenomenon — a period when chronic coin shortages forced thousands of municipalities to print their own emergency small change. The inflationary spiral following Austria-Hungary's collapse had driven metal coinage almost entirely out of circulation by hoarding and melting, leaving communities with no practical way to make change for everyday transactions.

E. Priegel of Steyr was a regional commercial printer, not a specialist security firm. The underprint was a modest deterrent against casual copying, not a serious anti-counterfeiting measure — at these denominations, sophisticated forgery was economically pointless.