100 Schilling

This note was issued in the immediate postwar period, when Austria was divided into four occupation zones and a functioning national currency was needed well before political normalization had occurred. The Oesterreichische Nationalbank had been dissolved under the Anschluss in 1938; its reconstitution in 1945 was one of the first acts of the provisional Renner government, and this series was part of that rushed relaunch.

Wilhelm Dachauer was a respected Austrian graphic artist whose work predated the Nazi period — his involvement here carried a degree of deliberate cultural continuity. Zenzinger and Lorber were established engravers at the Austrian State Printing Works, which had survived the war intact and was capable of resuming production quickly.

Overprinted and transitional issues from this period are well documented; the 1945 series was itself soon superseded by the currency reform of November 1945, which cancelled earlier Reichsmark-period notes entirely.