50 Schilling

Austria's 1935 50 Schilling was issued under the Dollfuss-Schuschnigg authoritarian regime, the so-called Fatherland Front government that had suspended parliament the previous year. The note circulated through one of the more politically unstable periods in the First Republic's history — between the failed Nazi putsch of July 1934 and the Anschluss of March 1938, which rendered the entire Schilling series obsolete almost overnight.

Rudolf Zenziger's engraving work for the Oesterreichische Nationalbank during this period is among the finest produced domestically; the Vienna printing tradition drew heavily on the old imperial intaglio school. Sterrer, better known as a painter and portraitist, brought academic credentials to the obverse design that were unusual for a banknote commission.