50 Heller Lasberg

Lasberg is a small market town in the Mühlviertel district of Upper Austria, and this 50 Heller note is a product of the Notgeld wave that swept Austrian municipalities following the economic collapse at the end of the First World War. The central government could not supply sufficient small-denomination coinage, so thousands of local authorities — including minor market communes like Lasberg — were authorized to print their own emergency currency. These circulated hyperlocally, often accepted only within the issuing community's immediate radius.

The two signatories, Franz Auer and Josef Prückl, were almost certainly local municipal officials rather than banking professionals. Self-printed and self-signed community notes of this kind were produced in very short runs, which paradoxically makes survivors common among collectors today — hoarded rather than spent into destruction.