20 Heller Wachau - Spitz Donauansicht

Spitz an der Donau is a small wine-producing market town in the Wachau valley, and like hundreds of Austrian municipalities it resorted to printing its own emergency currency — Notgeld — when postwar coin shortages made small-denomination transactions nearly impossible. The federal government in Vienna had stripped copper and nickel coinage from circulation during the war, and by 1920 the gap at the bottom of the monetary system had never been properly filled. Municipalities issued their own paper to fill it, with no central authorization and wildly varying print quality.

The Jaksc/Pick 1122 reference places this firmly in the Lower Austrian municipal Notgeld series. Most Wachau issues were printed in small runs and redeemed locally within a year or two.