50 Heller Mondsee

Austrian Notgeld from the immediate postwar period, when the collapse of the Habsburg monetary system left municipal governments scrambling to issue their own emergency small-change notes. Mondsee, a market town in Upper Austria on the lake of the same name, was among hundreds of communities that filled the coin vacuum between 1919 and 1921. The designer Reisenbichler was almost certainly a local — provincial Notgeld of this type was routinely commissioned from regional artists, schoolteachers, and craftsmen rather than professional engravers.

The signatory, Ant. Kaltenbrunner, signed as market mayor or municipal administrator. That surname carries uncomfortable associations in hindsight — Ernst Kaltenbrunner, later head of the RSHA, came from Upper Austria — though no documented connection to this official exists.