50 Heller, Gemeinde Eberstallzell, 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.

Eberstallzell is a commune in Upper Austria between Wels and Lambach, and it chose for its money a battle a thousand years old.

The face shows a mass of men with spears and shields at close quarters, captioned as the Magyar battle fought near Eberstallzell. The Hungarian raids into Bavaria and the eastern marches in the early tenth century culminated in the destruction of a Bavarian army at Pressburg in 907, and local tradition attached a fight to this ground. Whether or not it happened here, the choice tells you what a village wanted on its money in 1920: not its church and not its view, but the oldest thing anyone could remember about the place.

The reverse is calmer and more honest about the moment - a sower walking a field, the year 1920 set large beside him, and a promise to redeem by the end of October.