90 Heller, Gemeinde Klaus, 1920

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.

Klaus sits in the narrows of the Steyr valley in Upper Austria, where the Pyhrn railway runs through the gorge below the castle. The note is dated to a council resolution of 15 June 1920 and, unusually, does not promise a redemption date at all: the date "will be announced", and in the meantime the notes are exchanged only on personal presentation and only up to twenty Kronen a head, at the parish office.

That limit is the interesting part. A commune that expected its notes to come home would not need to ration redemption. Klaus was protecting itself against holders arriving with more paper than the village had cover for - and a denomination of 90 Heller, on a third printing, says who those holders were likely to be.