20 Heller, Gemeinde Wartberg an der Krems, 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.

Wartberg an der Krems is a village in the Kremstal, south of Linz on the road to the Pyhrn pass. Its note is the longest-lived in this group: valid until 31 December 1921, a full year after most Austrian communal paper had been called in and well after the government had ordered the practice stopped.

It was drawn by Emil Prietzel of Steyr, who also did Leonfelden's set, and it shows: the same hand-lettered display face, the same violet single-colour printing, the same way of building a border out of drawn dots and tendrils rather than engraved line. The only signature is the mayor's, Josef Riedler, set in type.