20 Heller Ertl

The Katholischer Kirchenbauverein Ertl — the Catholic Church Building Association of Ertl — issued this 20 Heller note as a Notgeld, emergency scrip produced during the severe coin shortage that gripped Austria from around 1916 onward. Parish and civic organizations across rural Austria stepped into the gap when the central monetary system simply stopped supplying small change in adequate quantities. That a church construction fund became a de facto local currency issuer says something blunt about the administrative collapse of wartime Austria-Hungary.

The two signatories — Schönegger as deputy chairman and Stockinger as chairman — were almost certainly local parishioners, not bankers.