50 Heller Raxendorf

Raxendorf is a small municipality in Lower Austria, and like hundreds of similar communities it issued Notgeld during the acute small-change shortage that followed Austria's defeat in the First World War. The central government could not produce coin fast enough, and local authorities — including villages with no banking infrastructure whatsoever — were left to paper over the gap themselves, literally. The Vollhammer and Karl signatures here represent local administrative officials, not bank officers.

These hyperlocal Austrian Notgeld issues were typically valid only within the issuing municipality, which kept redemption manageable but also meant they rarely traveled far — and rarely survived long after the shortage eased.