20 Heller St. Pölten

Austrian Kleingeldersatz — emergency small-change substitutes — flooded the market between 1919 and 1922 as coin shortages persisted well after the armistice. Modenhaus Alois Roth was a fashion goods retailer, and like hundreds of Austrian merchants during this period, it issued its own fractional scrip to handle till transactions that the state could not support in metal. These notes were redeemable only at the issuing establishment, which made their survival rate almost entirely dependent on whether the business remained solvent long enough to honor them.

Schmer was a local St. Pölten printer, not a security press — quality control and paper stock varied considerably across their Kleingeldersatz commissions.