500 Schilling

The 1965 series was printed by the Nationalbank's own intaglio facility in Vienna, which the institution had operated in-house since the interwar period — an unusual degree of vertical integration for a central bank of Austria's size. Roman Hellmann, who designed several notes in this postwar series, was a staff engraver working within that same facility rather than an outside contractor, giving the series an internal coherence rare in contemporary European note production.

By 1965 Austria had been fully sovereign for a decade following the State Treaty of 1955, and the 500 Schilling was among the higher denominations in active use during a period of sustained economic recovery. The watermark security, modest by later standards, was typical of Austrian practice before the more technically complex series of the 1980s displaced this generation entirely.