50 Heller Hagenberg

Hagenberg is a small village in Upper Austria, and like hundreds of similarly sized municipalities across the former Habsburg lands, it issued its own emergency currency — Notgeld — in the early 1920s when coin shortages made small-denomination transactions almost impossible. The collapse of the wartime economy had stripped copper and nickel from circulation entirely, and the Austrian central authorities were in no position to remedy it quickly. Local councils simply filled the gap themselves.

The printer, Job. Fleichtingers Erben of Linz, handled Notgeld commissions for numerous Upper Austrian communities during this period. Sepp Wiltschko's design credit is relatively uncommon for issues at this denomination level, where artwork was often uncredited or recycled across multiple parishes.