50 Heller Donautal

Austrian municipal Notgeld of this type was issued in enormous quantities between 1920 and 1922, when chronic small-coin shortages left village councils scrambling to print their own emergency scrip. St. Martin in the Donautal — a small Danube-valley community in Upper Austria — was among hundreds of parishes that contracted local job printers to produce denominations the national mint simply could not supply fast enough. L. Haase in Linz was a working commercial printer, not a specialist security firm, and the notes reflect that.

Franz Krammer's signature appears as the authorizing official, almost certainly the Bürgermeister at time of issue. These municipal issues were typically redeemable only within the issuing community, which kept most of them locally circulated and, ironically, often well-worn.