10 Heller Wimsbach

Wimsbach is a small Upper Austrian village, and this note is a Kriegsnotgeld issue — emergency small-change scrip that Austrian municipalities were forced to produce during and after World War I when coins vanished from circulation entirely, hoarded by a public that trusted metal over paper. Thousands of similar pieces were issued across German-speaking Europe, but the hyper-local nature of these notes meant that most were redeemed quickly within their issuing communities and destroyed, making survivors more elusive than their original print runs might suggest.

J. Stampfl u. Co. in Braunau handled numerous small municipal commissions of this type. Three signatories — almost certainly local officials rather than bank officers — was typical for Gemeinde-level issues, where the municipality itself vouched for redemption.