Emergency Money Bills by Heinz Schiestl

The sculptor and graphic artist Heinz Schiestl (1867-1940) played an important role among the designers of emergency money. In 1873, his family had moved from the Tyrol to Würzburg, where his father ran a woodcarving workshop. All three sons were trained there in woodcarving and in the restoration of works of art. In 1895, Heinz Schiestl took over his father's workshop. Among his major commissions in Würzburg were the design of figures and reliefs for the neo-Gothic high altar of St Burkard and for the altar of St Anna in the church of St Adalbero. Heinz Schiestl, who saw himself primarily as a sculptor, saw the economic necessity of continuing his father's work in the tradition of the Tyrolean wood sculptors. He created mainly artisanal sculptures, numerous altars, Stations of the Cross and further decoration for churches in the Franconian region. His work was influenced by the Franconian and Tyrolean late Gothic. In particular, the design language of Tilman Riemenschneider was a model for Schiestl's works.

Schiestl's graphic work finds expression in particular in his design of emergency money. In 1917, he was commissioned to design emergency notes for Lindenberg in the Allgäu. Schiestl had already designed Stations of the Cross for the parish church in the year before. During the years of the war, Schiestl received only few orders for his sculptures, so the design of emergency money was an additional source of income. The series for Lindenberg, produced in cooperation with the local printing house J. A. Schwarz, was enthusiastically received. Orders from 57 additional communities in the German Reich followed.

Schiestl continued his cooperation with the Schwarz printing house: Graphic designers and printing houses recommended each other for incoming orders. For each series, Schiestl engaged intensively with the respective local history and with local peculiarities and he made clear characteristic statements with the design for each location. The emergency notes also bear witness to Schiestl's style, already developed in his sculptural work: the design vocabulary often picks up Gothic elements. For the emergency money, this late mediaeval ornamentation satisfied not only the aesthetic demand, but also served as security technology. Since no security paper with watermarks was used for the printing of emergency money, the complicated printing motifs increased the protection against forgery.