20 Heller, Gemeinde Biedermannsdorf, 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.

Biedermannsdorf is a village south of Vienna, in the Moedling district. Its notes are the plainest kind of communal emergency money and the most revealing about the mechanism: one council sitting on 22 June 1920 resolved the issue, and the notes themselves expire three weeks later, on 15 July. Three weeks. This is not a currency; it is a bridging loan from a village to its own shopkeepers, printed by Weinhofer in Moedling, uniface to save ink, and authenticated by an oval rubber cachet struck across the middle by hand.

Two of the denominations exist on more than one paper - buff and pale green - which is what happens when a village orders a second run from a small printer using whatever stock is in the shop.