80 Heller

Upper Austria's regional emergency currency — Notgeld — emerged from the catastrophic coin shortage that followed the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire. By 1920, the new Austrian state simply could not mint small denominations fast enough to meet everyday commercial demand, so individual Länder, municipalities, and even private businesses issued their own paper fractional currency. Upper Austria's series was among the more systematically organized of these regional issues, produced locally in Linz rather than farmed out to Vienna or a foreign press.

The 80 Heller denomination is an odd one — a value that only makes sense in the context of Notgeld arithmetic, where issuers plugged gaps left by whatever coins had vanished from circulation.