30 Heller, Gemeinde Golling, 1920
Gutschein der Gemeinde Golling
Loading the detail view…
Scroll or pinch to zoom · drag to pan · Esc to close
This copy
- Accession
- OM-00278
- Series year
- 1920
- Actually issued
- 1920
- mayor
- not read unread
Signed by hand in ink; the hand is not resolvable at 600 dpi.
- councillor
- not read unread
Signed by hand in ink; the hand is not resolvable at 600 dpi.
- Grade
- UNC (IBNS)
As issued: full body, square corners, bright unfaded ink and no fold through the design. Estimated from the 600 dpi archival scan, which shows folds, soiling and edge condition but not paper crispness, pinholes, pressing or small repairs.
- Estimated value
- $7 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-26.
- Dimensions
- 79 × 61.2 mm (±0.6, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldEmergency moneySalzburgWoodcut designLocal designFirst Austrian Republic
The type
- Type
- 30 Heller, Gemeinde Golling, 1920
- Printer
- Not established
- Rarity
- very common
Inscriptions
Die Marktgemeinde-Vorstehung Golling loest diese Gutscheine bis 31. Dez. 1920 in gesetzlicher Waehrung ein.
The market-town council of Golling will redeem these vouchers in legal currency until 31 December 1920.
Symbology
- The view
- The note shows the Salzach gorge and the terraced fields above it. Golling's whole claim on the outside world was the gorge and the waterfall above it, and both faces of both notes are spent on the landscape.
- The chequered border
- Solid black and green squares instead of an engraved guilloche. A real banknote border is there to be hard to copy; this one is there because it looked right, which is the difference between money and municipal scrip.
- Hand signatures
- Two signatures in ink on the reverse, not facsimiles. The run was small enough that the council officers signed the notes themselves.
- Two-colour printing
- Black over a single flat second colour, which is as much as a small-town press could register reliably. Most of the effect comes from the drawing, not the press.
What was happening
Austria in 1919 was a republic of six and a half million people left holding the currency of an empire of fifty. The Austro-Hungarian Bank was in liquidation, the peace treaties had cut the country off from most of its coal and much of its food, and small coin simply vanished: hoarded against worse to come, melted for the metal, or carried across the new frontiers where it bought more. Shops could not give change, and a country that cannot give change cannot trade.
So the communes printed their own. A council resolution, a local printer, a redemption date and the pledge of the commune's entire movable and immovable property - that was the whole legal apparatus behind several thousand separate issues of Heller notes between 1919 and 1921. Vienna tolerated it while it solved a real problem and moved to stop it in 1920, by which time the notes had found a second market: collectors would pay more than face value for a complete set, so a village could raise real money by printing money it hoped would never be presented. The artwork improved as the need receded.
Golling lies in the Salzach valley south of Salzburg, under the Tennengebirge, at the mouth of the gorge the river cuts through on its way north. Its two notes are redeemable to 31 December 1920 by the market-town council and are signed by hand - one of the few issues in this group where you can see the actual pen.
The design is the most severe in the set and the most modern-looking: black and pale green only, a chequered border of solid squares, and a woodcut of the valley cut in hard parallel line. No arms, no verse, no blackletter. It could be a Wiener Werkstaette exercise, and the resemblance is not accidental - the graphic style that Austrian emergency money reached for in 1920 came straight out of the Vienna workshops of the previous decade.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 30 Heller, Gemeinde Golling, 1920 in the collection.
Print an album label for this note →
← → to move between notes