5 Kronen, Stadtgemeinde Wiener Neustadt, 1918

This is the earliest note in the Austrian group and the only one that belongs to the monarchy rather than the republic. The council of Wiener Neustadt resolved on 29 October 1918 to issue five million Kronen of treasury notes; the note itself is dated 15 November 1918, redeemable by 15 March 1919.

Those three weeks between the resolution and the date on the note contain the end of the Habsburg empire. On 29 October Austria-Hungary was suing for an armistice; it signed on 3 November; Karl I renounced participation in government on 11 November and the Republic of German-Austria was proclaimed the next day. The note went to press in the middle of that.

What makes it more than a municipal curiosity is the line about consent. Wiener Neustadt issued this im Einverstaendnisse mit der Oesterreichisch-ungarischen Bank - in agreement with the Austro-Hungarian Bank. The central bank of a state that was dissolving gave a provincial industrial town permission to print its own five-Krone notes. A year later the communes would stop asking.

Wiener Neustadt had reason to be first: it was the largest arms-manufacturing town in the Austrian half of the monarchy, with a locomotive works and an aircraft factory, and a wage bill it had to meet in cash every week.