50 Heller Pottenstein

Austrian Notgeld from the early 1920s occupies a strange corner of monetary history — these emergency issues were produced by municipalities, market towns, and even individual businesses after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire left the new Austrian Republic chronically short of small-denomination coinage. Pottenstein an der Triesting, a small market commune in Lower Austria, issued this 50 Heller note as a purely local stopgap, redeemable only within the issuing community.

The Notgeld phenomenon peaked between 1919 and 1922, by which point some issues had become more collectible curiosity than functional currency — printers encouraged this deliberately, producing decorative series to sell to collectors and offset printing costs.