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20 Heller Gresten
| Issuer | Marktgemeinde Gresten (Market Town of Gresten) |
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| Year | |
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| Currency | Krone (1918-1921) |
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| Obverse description | Printed in green on light paper, the obverse is divided into two panels within a guilloche-bordered outer frame. The left panel contains a vignette of a church with twin spires set against a wooded hillside landscape, surmounted by the numeral '20' in a decorative cartouche with scrollwork ornaments. The right panel carries the issuer's name 'Marktgemeinde Gresten' at the top in Gothic script, followed by 'Notgeld' and the denomination 'Zwanzig Heller', below which appears a liability clause in German and three manuscript signature lines for the Bürgermeister, his deputy, and the Zahlmeister. |
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| Reverse description | Printed in green on light paper, the reverse is enclosed within a plain rectangular border. A central heraldic vignette displays the town arms of Gresten — a shield bearing a strongman figure flanked by castle towers — set within an ornate scrollwork cartouche, with the denomination numeral '20' and 'Heller' repeated in bold Gothic lettering to either side. Above the vignette a ribbon scroll carries 'Marktgemeinde Gresten', while below appear the anti-counterfeiting warning and the validity inscription 'Gültig bis 31. Dezember 1920'. |
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| Comments |
Gresten is a small market town in Lower Austria, and like hundreds of similar municipalities it issued its own emergency currency — Notgeld — during and after the First World War when small coins disappeared from circulation almost entirely. The Austrian government effectively sanctioned this local stopgap, though the issuing authority was the municipality itself, not any banking institution.
Paper Heller notgeld from minor Austrian market towns survives in widely varying condition. Gresten's issues were printed in small quantities for purely local use and rarely traveled far.