50 Heller Altschwendt

Altschwendt is a village in Upper Austria with a population that barely crested 500 in the early twentieth century — among the smallest communities to issue Notgeld during the postwar inflation crisis. The 1920 date places this squarely in the second wave of Austrian municipal emergency money, after the collapse of the Habsburg economy left small communities unable to obtain sufficient small-denomination coinage from Vienna. Franz Altmann's signature as the sole authorizing official was typical of these village issues, where the Bürgermeister or a designated municipal officer simply signed off on the entire run.

Survival rates for rural Upper Austrian Heller notes are low. They were printed in small quantities, often on whatever paper was locally available.