50 Heller

Grieskirchen is a small market town in Upper Austria, and this 50 Heller note is a product of the post-WWI emergency currency wave that swept through Austria between roughly 1919 and 1921. With the collapse of the Habsburg economy and a severe coin shortage, thousands of Austrian municipalities, cooperatives, and businesses issued their own Notgeld — locally valid scrip meant to keep small transactions moving. Grieskirchen was one of hundreds of Upper Austrian communities that did so.

The Bürgermeister's signature, Joh. Straßer, gives the note its legal grounding under local authority. These issues were typically redeemable at the issuing municipality and withdrawn once the national currency stabilized.