50 Heller Maria-Schmolln

Maria Schmolln is a small pilgrimage village in Upper Austria, and like hundreds of Austrian municipalities it resorted to printing its own Notgeld during the severe coin shortages that followed the First World War. The 50 Heller denomination places this squarely in the everyday-transaction range — small change that banks and the central government simply couldn't supply fast enough to rural communities in 1920.

Bürgermeister F. Forsterpointner's signature gives this note its legal grounding under local authority rather than any banking institution. Municipal officials, not bankers, were the guarantors here.