50 Heller Hellmonsödt

Hellmonsödt is a small market town in Upper Austria, and like hundreds of Austrian municipalities it resorted to issuing its own emergency paper money — Notgeld — during the severe coin shortage that gripped Austria from around 1920. These hyper-local issues were legal tender only within the issuing community, accepted at the village baker or butcher but worthless a few kilometres down the road.

The Jaksc catalogue is the specialist reference for Austrian municipal Notgeld; the 0364 prefix places Hellmonsödt within its Upper Austrian sequence. Designer credit to L. Haase is uncommon for issues this small — most village Notgeld went unsigned.