20 Heller Lasberg

Lasberg is a small market town in Upper Austria, and this 20 Heller note is a product of the notgeld wave that swept Austrian municipalities between 1919 and 1921. The postwar collapse of the Habsburg monetary system left small communities without adequate small change, prompting hundreds of local authorities to print their own emergency issues. Lasberg's series was signed by the Marktrichter and a local official — Franz Auer and Josef Prückl — whose names lend the note whatever legal weight a village could muster in 1920.

Upper Austrian notgeld of this period was printed in relatively small quantities and saw genuine circulation, unlike the purely collectible "Serienscheine" issued simultaneously by larger Austrian towns for the philatelic trade.