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20 Heller Gresten
| Issuer | Marktgemeinde Gresten (Market Town of Gresten) |
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| Year | |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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| Obverse description | The obverse is divided into two panels within a hatched decorative border. The left panel contains a vignette of a church tower with a pointed steeple set among trees, surmounted by the numeral '20' in a ruled box with ornamental corner scrollwork. The right panel carries the issuing authority inscription, denomination in Kuchenmeister blackletter script, and a liability clause in German, with three manuscript signature lines for the Bürgermeister, his deputy (Bürgerml.-Stellv.), and the Zahlmeister. |
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| Reverse lettering | Marktgemeinde Gresten. 20 Heller 20 Heller Nachahmung wird gesetzlich bestraft. Gültig bis 31. Dezember 1920. |
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| Comments |
Gresten is a small market town in Lower Austria, and like hundreds of similar municipalities, it issued emergency paper money — Notgeld — during the acute coin shortage that gripped Austria from around 1916 onward. Wartime metal demands stripped small denominations from circulation almost entirely, forcing local authorities to fill the gap with their own scrip. The Marktgemeinde had no printing infrastructure of its own; these notes were typically ordered from local printers or stationers and redeemed locally, with no standing beyond the issuing community's good faith.
Survival rates for Austrian municipal Notgeld vary enormously. Notes that circulated heavily in small communities often disintegrated; those saved by collectors in the early 1920s Notgeld collecting craze tend to account for most surviving examples.