5 Heller Rattenberg

Rattenberg is the smallest town in Austria by area — a narrow sliver pressed between the Inn River and a cliff face, with a population that barely exceeded a few hundred in 1920. That it issued its own emergency currency at all speaks to just how thoroughly the postwar coinage shortage had atomized monetary supply in the Alpine regions. Hundreds of Tyrolean municipalities, parishes, and even individual businesses printed Notgeld in this period, with Wagner in Innsbruck handling a significant share of the local contract work.

The 1920 Tyrolean issues are among the more ephemeral of the Austrian Notgeld wave — redeemed quickly once the national supply stabilized, and often printed in small runs to begin with.