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50 Heller St. Oswald bei Freistadt
| Issuer | Gemeinde St. Oswald bei Freistadt (Market Community) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1920 |
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| Currency | Krone (1918-1921) |
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| Obverse description | The central field carries the denomination numeral '50' within an oval cartouche set against a stippled underprint, flanked on either side by arched vignettes: a Gothic church with a tall spire to the left and an onion-domed Baroque church to the right, both rendered in fine letterpress line work. A decorative stone wall runs along the lower register, unifying the composition. The issuing legend appears across the upper portion in Gothic script. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The left half of the reverse is occupied by the municipal coat of arms of Markt Oswald — a shield bearing a church tower flanked by two rampant lions, inscribed 'MARKT OSWALD' along the upper arc — printed in brown letterpress. The right half contains a block of justified German text setting out the legal terms of issue, signed by Bürgermeister Leopold Krenner and dated St. Oswald, 1. Mai 1920, with a printer's monogram device below the signature. The denomination '50 Heller' appears in bold type beneath the arms, and a cautionary legend against counterfeiting runs along the bottom. |
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| Comments |
St. Oswald bei Freistadt is a small market community in Upper Austria, and this 50 Heller note is a product of the Notgeld wave that swept Austrian municipalities between 1919 and 1921. The postwar collapse of the Austro-Hungarian krone left regional governments scrambling to cover small-denomination shortfalls that Vienna could not address quickly enough, and hundreds of communities — including ones far too small to have any business issuing currency — printed their own emergency paper.
Leopold Krenner's signature as signatory places administrative responsibility squarely at the local level. The Jaksch/Pick reference JPR0917-50 situates this within the documented Upper Austrian municipal series, but print runs for notes of this type were rarely recorded, and survival rates vary sharply by community.