50 Heller Steegen

Steegen is a small village in Upper Austria, and like hundreds of similarly obscure municipalities, it issued its own emergency currency — Notgeld — during the severe coin shortage that followed the collapse of the Habsburg economy. The Lanz printing house in nearby Eferding supplied many of these small local issues across the region, working quickly and cheaply to meet demand from village councils that had little time and less money to spend on elaborate design work.

Josef Holzhauer's signature as issuing authority gives this note its only individualizing mark beyond the place name.