25 Heller Schwarzenberg

Austrian Notgeld at its most municipal. Schwarzenberg is a small market town in the Bregenzerwald district of Vorarlberg, and like hundreds of Austrian communes in 1920, it issued its own emergency small change to plug the gap left by a chronic shortage of metal coin in the post-war economy. The 25 Heller denomination sits at the lower end of the typical Notgeld range — useful for everyday transactions at a time when the Austrian crown was already under severe inflationary pressure.

Vorarlberg Notgeld from this period is modestly collected regionally but rarely attracts serious specialist attention outside Austria, making surviving examples more common in local holdings than in international auction rooms.