20 Heller Mistlberg

Mistlberg is a tiny rural commune in Upper Austria, and this 20 Heller note is a product of the Notgeld wave that swept Austria-Hungary's successor states after 1918, when small coinage vanished almost entirely from circulation due to metal hoarding and postwar economic disruption. Municipalities of even the most modest size were authorized — or simply compelled by necessity — to print their own emergency fractional currency.

Heese of Linz handled production, a regional printer that fulfilled a large number of these local commissions across Upper Austria. The single mayoral signature, Huber, would have carried the full legal weight of the commune's backing — which, in a village of this scale, meant very little beyond local acceptance.