20 Heller Windhaag

Windhaag bei Freistadt is a small market town in Upper Austria, and like hundreds of similar municipalities it resorted to printing its own emergency currency — Notgeld — when the post-war coin shortage left local commerce effectively paralysed. The Austrian state had little capacity to supply small-denomination coinage in 1920, and communities at this scale were largely on their own.

These hyper-local issues were redeemable only within the issuing community, which kept circulation geographically tight and redemption periods short. Notes that weren't presented in time became worthless, which accounts for the relatively high survival rate of uncirculated examples — many were simply forgotten or kept as novelties before the redemption window closed.