20 Heller Peuerbach, Markt-Verwaltung Peuerbach

Peuerbach is a small market town in Upper Austria, and this 20 Heller note is a product of the Notgeld wave that swept Austrian municipalities after the collapse of the Habsburg economy left small change almost entirely absent from circulation. The Markt-Verwaltung — the market administration, a local governing body rather than a proper financial institution — issued these notes on its own authority, a arrangement common enough in 1920 but legally awkward by any peacetime standard.

Druckerei Priezel in Steyr handled production for numerous Upper Austrian communities during this period, which accounts for the relatively clean typography typical of their small-denomination work. Three separate signatories — administrator, deputy, and cashier — were required to validate the note, an unusually formal arrangement for an emergency scrip of this size.