20 Heller Stein an der Donau

Stein an der Donau is today administratively merged with Krems, but in 1920 it was still an independent municipality issuing its own emergency small change — Notgeld — to compensate for the acute shortage of low-denomination coinage that plagued Austria in the years immediately following the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy. Hundreds of Austrian towns did the same, but having the printer, J. Faber, located in Krems — literally next door — made the logistics unusually direct.

The Heller denomination itself was already economically marginal by 1920, with inflation beginning to erode any practical value these notes might carry. Most circulated briefly and were discarded, which makes surviving examples more a function of collector interest at the time than of careful preservation afterward.