50 Heller Mitterndorf

Mitterndorf im Steirischen Salzkammergut issued this Notgeld piece during the currency chaos that followed Austria's post-war contraction — municipal and local authorities across the former imperial territories were forced to print their own small-denomination emergency scrip simply because coinage had all but vanished from circulation. Paul Gerin in Vienna was one of the busiest printers of provincial Austrian Notgeld, handling commissions from dozens of Gemeinden simultaneously through 1920 and 1921.

Schaffran's design work for the series is regionally specific rather than generic — a deliberate choice by many Styrian communities to assert local identity through imagery at a moment when the political map of central Europe was being redrawn entirely.