50 Heller, Gemeinde Erla bei St. Valentin, 1920
Notgeldschein der Gemeinde Erla bei St. Valentin, N.-Oest.
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00320
- Series year
- 1920
- Actually issued
- 1920
- mayor
- Johann Obinger uncertain
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
Candidates: Johann Obinger, Johann Oberinger.
- Grade
- AU (IBNS)
Bright violet on salmon stock, with faint pink toning 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
- $5 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-26.
- Dimensions
- 95 × 55.9 mm (±1.1, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldEmergency moneyLower AustriaLocal designWoodcut designFirst Austrian Republic
The type
- Type
- 50 Heller, Gemeinde Erla bei St. Valentin, 1920
- Printer
- Not established
- Rarity
- very common
Inscriptions
Die Gemeinde Erla bei St. Valentin, Nied.-Oesterr., gibt Gutscheine bis zu einem Betrage von 32.000 Kronen aus. G.-R.-B. 5. 1920. Diese Gutscheine werden bis 31. XII. 1920 an der Gemeindekassa in gesetzlichem Bargelde eingeloest.
The commune of Erla near St. Valentin, Lower Austria, issues vouchers to an amount of 32,000 Kronen. Council resolution 5 of 1920. These vouchers will be redeemed in legal tender at the parish treasury until 31 December 1920.
Symbology
- Erla Closter 1672
- The Benedictine convent of Erla as it stood in 1672, captioned with that date. The house was suppressed in the Josephine reforms of the 1780s; the village kept the buildings and, a century and a half later, put them on its money.
- The abbess with her crozier
- A woman in religious habit holding an abbatial staff, set in the middle panel of the reverse. Erla was a house of nuns, and the figure is its head - an unusual thing to find on any currency, and a reminder of who used to hold authority here.
- G.-R.-B.
- *Gemeinderatsbeschluss* - council resolution, numbered and dated. Every Austrian communal note cites one somewhere; it is the only legal authority behind the whole issue.
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.
Erla is a village near St. Valentin in Lower Austria, and what it had was a convent: a Benedictine house founded in the eleventh century, dissolved under Joseph II, its church still standing. The note's face is captioned Erla Closter 1672 and shows the long low range of the monastery with its church tower above the fields.
On the reverse, in the centre panel between the two halves of the legal text, stands an abbess in her habit with a crozier - the house's own authority, drawn from its monuments, printed on money issued by the parish that inherited its buildings.
The whole issue was thirty-two thousand Kronen, redeemable at the parish treasury to the last day of 1920.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Heller, Gemeinde Erla bei St. Valentin, 1920 in the collection.
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