50 Heller, Gemeinde Eggendorf, 1920
Gutschein der Gemeinde Eggendorf
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00322
- Series year
- 1920
- Actually issued
- 1920
- mayor
- not read unread
Signed by hand in ink; the hand is not resolvable at 600 dpi.
- 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
- 90.6 × 62.7 mm (±1.6, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldEmergency moneyUpper AustriaLocal designWoodcut designFirst Austrian Republic
The type
- Type
- 50 Heller, Gemeinde Eggendorf, 1920
- Printer
- J. Haase, Linz
- Rarity
- very common
Inscriptions
Die Gemeinde Eggendorf gibt laut Sitzungsbeschluss vom 17. Mai 1920 Gutscheine aus im Gesamtbetrage von 30.000 Kr. Dieselben werden bis 31. December 1920 in gesetzl. Bargelde bei der Gemeindekasse eingeloest. Die Nachahmung dieses Scheines wird gesetzl. bestraft.
Under the council resolution of 17 May 1920 the commune of Eggendorf issues vouchers to a total of 30,000 Kronen. They will be redeemed in legal tender at the parish treasury until 31 December 1920. Counterfeiting this note is punishable by law.
Symbology
- A single green landscape
- One colour, one picture, edge to edge. Where a town would have bought a border and a guilloche, Eggendorf bought a drawing and let it fill the note.
- Fern and scroll ornament
- The frame is built from drawn fern fronds rather than engine-turned line. It is the decorative vocabulary of a book illustrator, not a banknote engraver, and it is what most distinguishes Austrian communal money from the real thing.
- The printer's credit
- *J. Haase, Linz* in the lower right corner. The Linz printers supplied much of Upper Austria's emergency money, and the same hands turn up on notes from communes thirty kilometres apart.
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.
Eggendorf resolved its issue on 17 May 1920: thirty thousand Kronen of vouchers, redeemed at the parish treasury by the last day of the year.
It is printed in one colour, a strong grass green, and the whole face is a single landscape - the village strung along its valley with the church in the middle distance, framed in drawn fern fronds and scrolls. The name is set in a cartouche at the foot like a title on a print rather than a denomination on money.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Heller, Gemeinde Eggendorf, 1920 in the collection.
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