5 Gulden

The Wiener Stadt Banco was not a bank in any modern sense — it was a municipal debt-management institution founded in 1706, originally created to refinance Vienna's war debts. By the 1790s it had become the principal issuer of paper currency in the Habsburg lands, and the notes it put out during this decade were circulating against a silver reserve that was already under serious strain from the costs of the French Revolutionary Wars.

The 1796 date matters. Austrian state finances deteriorated sharply through the late 1790s, culminating in the catastrophic Bankozettel inflation that preceded the 1811 state bankruptcy — when the currency was devalued to one-fifth of face value.

Watermarking was the primary anti-counterfeiting measure for the entire Bankozettel series, a technology the Banco relied on heavily given the absence of more sophisticated intaglio security printing.