80 Heller, Gemeinde Obritzberg, 1920
Gutschein der Gemeinde Obritzberg, N.-Oe.
Loading the detail view…
Scroll or pinch to zoom · drag to pan · Esc to close
This copy
- Accession
- OM-00325
- Series year
- 1920
- Actually issued
- 1920
- mayor
- Neuhauser uncertain
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
- 98.7 × 60.4 mm (±1, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldEmergency moneyLower AustriaLocal designWoodcut designFirst Austrian Republic
The type
- Type
- 80 Heller, Gemeinde Obritzberg, 1920
- Printer
- Sommer, St. Poelten
- Rarity
- common
Inscriptions
Gutschein der Gemeinde Obritzberg, N.-Oe. Giltig bis 31. Dezember 1920. Nachahmung wird gesetzlich bestraft. Der Buergermeister.
Voucher of the commune of Obritzberg, Lower Austria. Valid until 31 December 1920. Counterfeiting is punishable by law. The mayor.
Symbology
- The hill and the church
- A road climbing between orchards to the parish church on the ridge, drawn across the full width of the note. Obritz-berg: the name is the hill, and the hill is the picture.
- A single signature
- Only the mayor signs. In a commune this size the office and the man were the same thing, and one hand could get through the whole run.
- Twenty and eighty
- The pairing gives the game away. Twenty Heller is change; eighty Heller is a collectable. By mid-1920 most Austrian communes were issuing both at once and were frank about neither.
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.
Obritzberg is a commune in Lower Austria west of St. Poelten, and its notes are valid to the last day of 1920 on the signature of its mayor alone.
The face is one long woodcut of the hill the parish is named for: a road winding up through orchards and vine rows to the church on the summit, drawn wide and low so it runs the whole width of the note. The denomination sits in a small panel at the left, out of the way of the view.
Two denominations were issued, twenty and eighty Heller. The eighty is the tell. A voucher of eighty Heller is not change for anything; it is a number chosen so that a set is a set, and that is what the second denomination of most Austrian communes was for by the middle of 1920.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 80 Heller, Gemeinde Obritzberg, 1920 in the collection.
Print an album label for this note →
← → to move between notes