50 Heller, Gemeinde Pichl, 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.

Pichl is a commune in Upper Austria, and its note is the plainest kind: a black band of hand-lettering across the head, the legal formula beneath it, and on the back a broad woodcut of the village seen from the hill above, roofs and orchards running down to the valley.

Its validity runs to 1 November 1921, which is late. By then the Austrian government had been trying for more than a year to end communal issues, and the Krone had lost most of what value it still had in 1920.