20 Schilling

Austria's immediate postwar currency situation was chaotic. The Reichsmark had been the circulating medium under the Anschluss, and the Allied occupation authorities needed a transitional Austrian issue quickly. This 1945 Schilling series was authorized under the Soviet-influenced Provisional State Government before the four-power occupation framework was fully settled — a fact that complicates the note's political attribution considerably.

Dachauer had been a prominent figure in Austrian applied arts since the 1920s, but by 1945 the printing infrastructure to execute his designs to prewar standards was severely degraded. Zenziger and Lorber were both established Österreichische Staatsdruckerei engravers, and the split engraving credit across the two sides is typical of how that workshop divided labor on priority wartime and postwar jobs.