20 Heller

Thann is a small municipality in Upper Austria, and this 20 Heller Gemeindegeld note is a product of the acute small-change shortage that gripped Austria during and immediately after World War One. With silver coinage hoarded or melted and the imperial mint unable to keep pace with wartime demand, thousands of Austrian municipalities were authorized to issue their own low-denomination emergency paper — Notgeld in the German-language tradition, though Austrian issues of this type are catalogued separately.

The single manuscript signature of Josef Krawinkler almost certainly represents the Bürgermeister or a designated community treasurer, as was standard for these hyper-local authorizations. Jaksc 1067 is among the more obscure entries in the Austrian municipal series.