50 Heller, Stadtgemeinde Moedling, 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.

Moedling is the first town south of Vienna, close enough to be a suburb and old enough not to behave like one. Its council resolved the issue on 10 April 1920, for a hundred thousand Kronen in fifty-Heller notes, to be accepted and redeemed by 31 August 1920.

The note is monochrome blue and puts two things on the face: the church of St. Othmar on its terrace above the town, and the town's arms - a lion on a barry field. Between them they are the whole argument for trusting it. Moedling was a district capital with a rateable base, and the note reads less like village scrip than like a small municipal bond that happens to be worth fifty Heller.