50 Heller, Gemeinde Engerwitzdorf, 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.

Engerwitzdorf lies in the Muehlviertel north of Linz. Its council resolved on 24 April 1920 to issue fifty thousand Kronen of vouchers, accepted by the commune to the end of that year and redeemed in the first three weeks of January 1921.

The whole face is given to a single woodcut of the chapel of St. Aegidius, captioned with its building date of 1365 - a chapel five and a half centuries old on money that was designed to last eight months.