50 Schilling Austrian Police Force

Austria issued this coin to mark the 125th anniversary of the Austrian federal gendarmerie, founded in 1849 under Franz Joseph I as a militarized rural police force modeled closely on the French Gendarmerie Nationale. The gendarmerie remained a separate institution from the urban Bundespolizei until 2005, when both forces were merged into a single national police body — meaning this coin commemorates an organization that no longer exists in the form being honored.