30 Heller

Firsching was a small rural commune in what is now the Sudetenland region of the Czech Republic — at the time of issue, part of the newly formed Czechoslovakia but with a predominantly German-speaking population still uneasily adjusting to postwar borders. Like hundreds of similar communities across Austria and the former Habsburg lands, Firsching resorted to printing its own emergency currency in 1920 because small-denomination coinage had effectively vanished from circulation, hoarded or melted down during the war years.

Franz Brandstätter signed as Ortsvorsteher — village headman rather than any banking authority. That single signature on a piece of locally printed paper was the entire guarantee behind it.