20 Heller, Gemeinde Poetting, 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.

Poetting is a small commune in the Innviertel of Upper Austria. Its council resolved the issue on 23 April 1920 and set redemption for the first fortnight of December that year.

The two denominations share a design: a blue frame of interlocking key-pattern, a church tower on the left of the face, and a wide woodcut of the village under its church on the back. In the small panels beside the denomination are crossed hammers and crossed keys - a tool and a symbol side by side, work and St. Peter.