50 Heller Grünbach bei Freistadt

Grünbach bei Freistadt is a small Upper Austrian village, and this note belongs to the vast wave of Notgeld issued by Austrian municipalities between 1919 and 1921 to address a crippling shortage of small-denomination coins following the collapse of the Habsburg economy. L. Haase in Linz was a regional printer handling dozens of such commissions simultaneously, which shows in the workmanship. The two signatories — Fischerlehner and Firklbauer — were local officials who personally authorized scrip backed by nothing more than the municipality's word and the expectation that the coin shortage would eventually resolve.