50 Heller, Gemeinde Eggendorf, 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.

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.