50 Heller Kreuzen

Kreuzen is a small market town in Upper Austria, and like hundreds of similarly sized municipalities, it issued its own emergency small change during the postwar Heller shortage of 1920. These Notgeld issues were a direct consequence of coin hoarding and metal shortages that began during the First World War and persisted well into the early Republic — by 1920, the Austrian state had effectively ceded small-denomination currency production to anyone willing to print it.

M. Engel & Söhne handled a substantial volume of municipal Notgeld commissions out of Vienna, which accounts for the consistent print quality across what were otherwise purely local instruments. Kreuzen's issue is unexceptional within the series — its interest lies in the phenomenon, not the note.