50 Heller Randegg

Randegg is a small municipality in Lower Austria, and this 50 Heller note is a product of the acute small-change famine that gripped Austria during and immediately after the First World War. The hoarding of metal coinage left communities issuing their own Heller-denomination Notgeld — emergency paper — as the only practical substitute. Rudolf v. Erb printed this locally in Scheibbs, the nearest administrative town of any size.

Three signatures authenticate it: the Bürgermeister, the Vizebürgermeister, and a single Gemeinderat member. That level of municipal formality on a fractional note underscores how seriously even the smallest communities took the legal obligation to back their own scrip.