500 Forint Interest Paying Legal Tender Treasury Bill

This note belongs to the first wave of Hungarian paper money issued under the revolutionary government of 1848 — the Batthyány cabinet's attempt to fund an independent Hungarian state while the Habsburg court still technically retained sovereignty. The Ministry of Finance, newly established under Lajos Kossuth, authorized these interest-bearing treasury bills as a stopgap before a proper national bank could be organized. The "interest paying" designation was genuine: holders were entitled to 5% annual interest, a detail that made these acceptable to a merchant class deeply skeptical of unsecured paper.

Landerer és Heckenast, the Pest firm that printed them, was primarily a book and periodical publisher — they had printed the Twelve Points on the first day of the March revolution. Security printing was not their specialty, and the relatively simple typography reflects that constraint.