50 Heller, Stadtgemeinde Wien, 1920
Kassenschein der Stadtgemeinde Wien ueber 50 Heller
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00314
- Series year
- 1920
- Actually issued
- 1920
- mayor
- Jakob Reumann (Reumann Jakob) certain
Vienna's first Social Democratic mayor, in office 1919-1923.
- deputy_mayor
- Georg Emmerling certain
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
- city_councillor
- Hugo Breitner (Breitner) certain
City finance councillor, signing as Stadtrat; architect of the municipal taxes that paid for Red Vienna's housing.
- Grade
- VG (IBNS)
Heavily circulated, and the only note in this group that plainly was: multiple hard folds, edge splits, loss at the upper left corner, general soiling and a fatigued sheet. Vienna's emergency money was spent, not collected. 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
- $1 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-26.
- Dimensions
- 74.5 × 50.1 mm (±1.6, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldEmergency moneyViennaRed ViennaMunicipal financeFirst Austrian Republic
The type
- Type
- 50 Heller, Stadtgemeinde Wien, 1920
- Printer
- Paul Gerin, Wien II
- Rarity
- common
Inscriptions
Die Gemeinde Wien haftet fuer diese Verbindlichkeit mit ihrem ganzen beweglichen u. unbeweglichen Vermoegen. Wien, am 3. Dezember 1920.
The commune of Vienna stands behind this obligation with its entire movable and immovable property. Vienna, 3 December 1920.
Zur Linderung der Kleingeldnot gibt die Gemeinde Wien fuer weitere fuenf Millionen Kronen Kassenscheine aus. Diese Kassenscheine lauten auf 50 Heller, sind unverzinslich, werden von der Gemeinde Wien bis 31. Dezember 1921 in Zahlung genommen und in der Zeit vom 1. bis 31. Dezember 1921 in gesetzlichem Bargelde eingeloest.
To relieve the shortage of small change the commune of Vienna issues a further five million Kronen of treasury notes. These notes are denominated at 50 Heller, bear no interest, will be accepted in payment by the commune of Vienna until 31 December 1921 and redeemed in legal tender between 1 and 31 December 1921.
Symbology
- St. Stephen's
- The cathedral spire on the left of the face. Vienna had a thousand possible emblems and used the one that needs no caption.
- The Vienna eagle
- The city's arms below the vignette. In 1919 Vienna was detached from Lower Austria and made a federal province, so the corporation issuing this note was simultaneously a city council and a provincial government - the reason it could pledge what it pledges.
- Jakob Reumann
- Jakob Reumann (1853–1925), mayor of Vienna 1919–1923 and the first Social Democrat to hold the office. His signature on the city's emergency money marks the start of the period the city still calls Red Vienna.
- Hugo Breitner
- Hugo Breitner (1873–1946), city finance councillor, signing here as Stadtrat. He paid for Vienna's municipal housing with progressive taxes on luxury and property that became the most bitterly contested fiscal policy in interwar Austria. Forced into exile in 1934, he died in California in 1946.
- Paul Gerin
- A Vienna printing house in the second district, still trading. The city used a commercial printer rather than the state press - this was municipal, not national, money.
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.
Vienna did it too, and at a scale that puts the villages in perspective: five million Kronen of fifty-Heller notes on this tranche, dated 3 December 1920, redeemable through the whole of December 1921.
Read the three signatures and you have the politics of the decade in one line. Jakob Reumann was Vienna's first Social Democratic mayor, elected in 1919 when the city separated from Lower Austria and became a province in its own right - which is why a municipal note carries a province's weight. Georg Emmerling was his deputy. And the third name is Hugo Breitner, the finance councillor who funded Red Vienna's housing programme with the steeply progressive municipal taxes his opponents called the Breitner taxes, and who was driven out of the country in 1934.
The note this trio signed is a fifty-Heller piece of small change, issued because the city could not otherwise let its citizens buy bread in the right quantities. Both facts are true at once, and neither is the whole story of Vienna in 1920.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Heller, Stadtgemeinde Wien, 1920 in the collection.
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