20 Heller, Gemeinde Poetting, 1920
Gutschein der Gemeinde Poetting ueber Zwanzig Heller
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00321
- Series year
- 1920
- Actually issued
- 1920
- deputy_mayor
- A. Hager probable
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
- mayor
- Johann Gabriel probable
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
- Grade
- UNC (IBNS)
As issued: full body, square corners, bright unfaded ink and no fold through the design. 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
- $7 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-26.
- Dimensions
- 82.1 × 57.5 mm (±1.6, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldEmergency moneyUpper AustriaLocal designWoodcut designFirst Austrian Republic
The type
- Type
- 20 Heller, Gemeinde Poetting, 1920
- Printer
- Pressvereins-Druckerei, Grieskirchen
- Rarity
- very common
Inscriptions
Die Gemeinde Poetting gibt auf Grund des Sitzungsbeschlusses vom 23. April 1920 Gutscheine aus. Diese werden vom 1. bis 15. Dezember 1920 eingeloest.
Under the council resolution of 23 April 1920 the commune of Poetting issues vouchers. They will be redeemed between 1 and 15 December 1920.
Symbology
- Crossed hammers and crossed keys
- Two small shields flank the denomination. The hammers are a workman's, the keys are St. Peter's - the parish and the people who lived in it, reduced to two devices small enough to print at a centimetre across.
- The village under its church
- The reverse widens out to the whole settlement: a farmhouse in the foreground, the church tower behind, hills beyond. Almost every Upper Austrian commune spent its reverse this way, which is why the notes together amount to a photographic survey of the country in 1920 - drawn rather than photographed.
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.
Poetting is a small commune in the Innviertel of Upper Austria. Its council resolved the issue on 23 April 1920 and set redemption for the first fortnight of December that year.
The two denominations share a design: a blue frame of interlocking key-pattern, a church tower on the left of the face, and a wide woodcut of the village under its church on the back. In the small panels beside the denomination are crossed hammers and crossed keys - a tool and a symbol side by side, work and St. Peter.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 20 Heller, Gemeinde Poetting, 1920 in the collection.
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