40 Heller Schwarzenthal

Schwarzenthal is a small market commune in Upper Austria, and like dozens of similar villages in the post-WWI period, it issued its own emergency paper — Notgeld — to compensate for the near-total disappearance of small coin from circulation. The Austrian state had been melting and diverting metal since the war years, and by 1920 the shortage of fractional currency had become genuinely disruptive to daily commerce at the local level.

Franz Zeilinger's signature as issuing authority is the most individuating detail here. These hyperlocal issues were typically authorized and signed by the Bürgermeister or a designated municipal treasurer, and attribution to a named individual is often the only thread connecting the note to any recoverable local administrative record.