50 Heller

Schwallenbach is a village of perhaps a few dozen households on the south bank of the Danube in the Wachau, and the fact that it issued its own emergency currency at all says more about the Austrian postwar collapse than about any municipal ambition. The Heller had lost so much real purchasing power by 1920 that even quantities this small required local substitutes — the national supply of small-denomination coin had effectively evaporated through hoarding and metal requisition during the war years.

Printed by A. Grundmann in Vienna, a firm responsible for a significant volume of Lower Austrian Notgeld, and validated by a control stamp applied at the point of issue rather than at the press.