50 Heller Guntramsdorf

Guntramsdorf is a small market town south of Vienna, and like hundreds of similar Austrian municipalities in the years immediately following World War One, it issued its own emergency paper currency — Notgeld — to compensate for a severe shortage of small-denomination coinage. The central government had effectively lost control of small change, and local authorities stepped in with whatever printing resources they had available.

The dual signatures of Joh. Lorenz and Paul Perauer almost certainly represent the Bürgermeister and a designated municipal treasurer or council official — the standard authorization pairing for Marktgemeinde issues of this type. These were genuine legal obligations of the local community, redeemable in theory against the issuer.