75 Heller Schönau im Mühlkreis

Schönau im Mühlkreis is a small market town in Upper Austria, and this 75 Heller Notgeld belongs to the wave of locally issued emergency currency that Austrian municipalities produced between 1920 and 1921 when small-denomination coinage all but vanished from circulation after the collapse of the Habsburg monetary system. These Gemeinde-issued notes were legal within their issuing community only and were typically redeemed within months — which is precisely why so many were cancelled or destroyed, and why intact uncirculated examples survive in greater numbers than genuinely circulated ones.

The designer credit to Joh. Amneslofer is uncommon; most rural Upper Austrian Notgeld series were designed anonymously or by local schoolteachers and minor functionaries. That a named designer appears on the JPR0967a series suggests at least modest local ambition in the commission.