10 Kronen, Stadt Salzburg, 1919
Gutschein der Stadt Salzburg ueber 10 Kronen
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00295
- Series year
- 1919
- Actually issued
- 1919
- councillor_1
- not read unread
Signed by hand in ink; the hand is not resolvable at 600 dpi.
- mayor
- Josef Preis (Jos. Preis) certain
Mayor of Salzburg from 1919; the reading is clear and matches his term.
- councillor_2
- not read unread
Signed by hand in ink; the hand is not resolvable at 600 dpi.
- Grade
- AU (IBNS)
Bright with sharp corners and strong red; very light handling at the edges. About uncurrent: bright and unfolded, with light handling - a corner bump or a faint edge tone. Estimated from the 600 dpi archival scan, which cannot show paper crispness, pinholes, pressing or small repairs.
- Estimated value
- $13 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-26.
- Dimensions
- 107.3 × 70.6 mm (±1.6, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldEmergency moneySalzburgTown viewMunicipal financeFirst Austrian Republic
The type
- Type
- 10 Kronen, Stadt Salzburg, 1919
- Printer
- Josef Huttegger, Salzburg
- Rarity
- common
Inscriptions
Derselbe wird bis zur Einziehung bei den Kassen der Salzburger Sparkasse in Salzburg im gesetzlichen Bargelde eingeloest. Die Nachahmung ist strafbar.
It will be redeemed in legal tender at the counters of the Salzburg savings bank until called in. Counterfeiting is punishable.
Symbology
- Hohensalzburg over the Mirabell gardens
- The reverse frames the fortress behind the parterre and fountains of Mirabell - the archbishops' palace garden, public since 1854. The single most reproduced view of the city, on the city's own money.
- The arms of Salzburg
- A lion and a barry field at the head of the face, the arms of the prince-archbishopric that ruled here as a sovereign state until 1803.
- Redeemable at the savings bank
- Not at a town clerk's window but at the Salzburger Sparkasse. A note that a bank will cash is a different instrument from one a village office will exchange, and it is why this one is denominated in Kronen.
- No expiry date
- Alone in this group the note names no last day - only redemption "until called in". Salzburg expected its money to work for as long as necessary.
- Hand signatures in a city issue
- Mayor and two councillors, all in ink. Even at ten Kronen the run was small enough to sign, which says something about how much paper a city of sixty thousand actually needed at that denomination.
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.
Salzburg's note is a different order of thing from the village Heller scrip: ten Kronen, not ten Heller - twenty times the largest denomination in this group - redeemable not on a fixed date but "until called in", and not at the parish office but at the counters of the Salzburger Sparkasse, the city savings bank.
That is a city with a banking system behind it borrowing from its own citizens in small amounts, and it is why this note has no expiry: it was meant to circulate until the coin came back, however long that took. The face is bordered in pen-drawn scrollwork with the city arms at the top; the reverse shows the Mirabell gardens with the Hohensalzburg fortress behind them, which is the view Salzburg has been selling for two hundred years.
Three signatures, all by hand: two councillors flanking the mayor, Josef Preis.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 10 Kronen, Stadt Salzburg, 1919 in the collection.
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