20 Heller Schwarzenberg

Schwarzenberg is a small market town in the Böhmerwald region of Upper Austria, and this 20 Heller note is a product of the acute small-change famine that gripped Austria in the years immediately following the collapse of the Habsburg Empire. With the new republican government unable to supply adequate coinage, hundreds of Austrian municipalities printed their own Notgeld — emergency scrip valid only within the issuing community. The Schwarzenberg issue of 1920 falls late in that wave; by then most urban centers had already withdrawn their local notes as federal supply improved.

The single manuscript signature of Joh. Kasper suggests authorization by a single municipal official rather than the dual-signature format used by larger issuers.