20 Heller Imbach

Imbach is a tiny village in Lower Austria — population historically under a few hundred — which makes its appearance as a banknote issuer one of the odder footnotes of World War One's Kleingeldersatz crisis. When the Austro-Hungarian monetary system buckled under wartime hoarding and metal shortages after 1914, even the smallest municipalities were permitted to issue emergency Heller notes to keep local commerce moving. Hundreds of communes did exactly this, producing an enormous variety of locally printed Notgeld.

The Jaksch-Pick reference places this among the more obscure municipal issues, and surviving examples from villages of Imbach's size tend to appear infrequently — low original print runs combined with casual disposal once the emergency passed.