50 Heller Mondsee

Austrian Notgeld at its most locally specific. Mondsee is a small market town on the Mondsee lake in Upper Austria, and like hundreds of similar municipalities it issued its own emergency small-change currency in 1920 when the post-war coin shortage left everyday transactions nearly impossible. The Austro-Hungarian coinage system had collapsed with the empire itself, and the new Austrian state was years away from stabilizing its currency supply.

Reisenbichler designed the note locally. The signatory, Ant. Kaltenbrunner, was almost certainly a municipal official — the name Kaltenbrunner carries uncomfortable resonance in Austrian history, though no connection to Ernst Kaltenbrunner should be assumed here.