50 Heller Atzbach

Klemens Brosch was a printmaker of genuine reputation — his woodcut work had been exhibited and collected before his death in 1926 — which makes his involvement in Austrian Notgeld design something of a footnote to a serious artistic career, though not an uncommon one for the period. The postwar collapse of the krone forced hundreds of Austrian municipalities to commission emergency scrip, and small printers and artists across Upper Austria found themselves filling that gap.

Atzbach itself is a small commune near Vöcklabruck. That a note bearing Johann Hummer's signature as municipal authority was designed and printed by a Urfahr-based artist rather than a Vienna or Graz house is entirely consistent with how localized Notgeld production became by 1920.