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20 Schilling 1967, Austria

in Krause book Number: 142a
Years of issue: 02.07.1967 (1968)
Edition:
Signatures: Generalrat: Rudolf Poeschel, Präsident: Dr. Reinhard Kamitz, Generaldirektor: Dr. Ludwig Seiberl
Serie: 1966 - 1970 Issue
Specimen of: 02.07.1967
Material: Cotton fiber
Size (mm): 132 х 65
Printer: Oesterreichische Banknoten und Sicherheitsdruck, Wien

* All pictures marked magnify are increased partially by magnifying glass, the remaining open in full size by clicking on the image.

** The word "Specimen" is present only on some of electronic pictures, in accordance with banknote images publication rules of appropriate banks.

20 Schilling 1967

Description

Watermark:

watermark

Flower petals.

Avers:

20 Schilling 1967

Carl Ritter von Ghega

The engraving on banknote was made from lithograph by Austrian lithographer and painter Josef Kriehuber in 1851.

Carl Ritter von Ghega or Karl von Ghega (10 January 1802 - 14 March 1860) was the designer of the Semmering Railway from Gloggnitz to Mürzzuschlag. During his time, he was the most prominent of Austrian railway engineers and architects.

Born in Venice as Carlo Ghega from an Albanian family.His father, Anton Ghega, was an officer in the Austrian navy. He studied in Padua, where he took the examination for doctor of mathematics at the age of 18. He was attached to the Imperial board of Public Buildings when the railway movement commencing throughout Europe attracted his attention.

Karl began his engineering career with road and hydraulic engineering in Venice. Among other things he contributed to the building of the road over Cortina d'Ampezzo to Toblach. From 1836 to 1840 he was a construction supervisor for the railway track from Brno to Břeclav, the so-called Emperor Ferdinand North Railway. During this time, in 1836 and 1837 he studied also the railways in England and other European countries. In 1842, entrusted with the entire planning of the future state railway, he made a study trip to North America.

After his return to the state railway he began with the planning of the railway line to the south, from Mürzzuschlag to Graz and Trieste. The crossing of the Semmering was not believed possible, but as early as 1844 he submitted a plan for the crossing of the Semmering, with locomotives without an extra rail for gear wheels. Before the building was fully decided, he began to enforce the construction of locomotives which could overcome such upward gradients. Construction of the Semmeringbahn was begun in 1848 and completed in 1854.

In 1851, Ghega was knighted (Ritter) for his services to the country, and in 1853 he was made chief of planning for the whole railway network of the Austrian Empire.

Carl von Ghega was next assigned to the building of a railway in Transylvania, but he could not see this project to its end because of his death in Vienna from tuberculosis.

Borovnica viaduct

On right side, behind the portrait, 2 sections of Borovnica viaduct are visible.

The Borovnica Viaduct (Slovene: Borovniški viadukt, German: Franzdorfer Viadukt) is a former railroad viaduct in Borovnica, Slovenia.

The viaduct was completed in 1856 and spanned the Borovnica Valley along the route from Vienna to Trieste vie Ljubljana. During its construction and for some decades afterward it was the largest stone bridge in Europe. It was 561 meters (1,841 ft.) long and 38 meters (125 ft.) high. The structure was planned by Carl Ritter von Ghega and construction began in 1850, lasting until August 1856, when the first train crossed it. It was a two-story structure; the first story consisted of 22 arches, and the second story had 25 arches. It was supported by 24 columns built of dressed stone that stood on wooden pilings driven into the loamy marsh soil. The arches were built of brick. The construction required one million cubic feet of broken stone, five million bricks, and one million cubic feet of stone blocks.

The viaduct was in poor condition before the Second World War. Water had seeped into the viaduct for decades, weakening the bricks, and the oak pilings that supported it were beginning to rot, with the result that the entire structure was gradually settling. Trains crossing it had to slow down to 5 kilometers per hour (3.1 mph.). At the beginning of the Second World War in Yugoslavia, the withdrawing Yugoslav Army blew up part of the bridge; Italian forces replaced the missing part of the viaduct with an iron structure. After the Italians withdrew, German forces built a bypass route past the viaduct because of the danger posed by increasingly frequent aerial attacks. After the last major Allied aerial attack in 1944, the partially destroyed viaduct was not repaired. The railroad was rerouted to the edge of the Borovnica Valley in 1947, which is where it also runs today. The remaining part of the viaduct was gradually dismantled by 1950. Today only a single column of the viaduct remains, standing in the middle of Borovnica.

coat

Lower, centered, is a coat of arms.

The current coat of arms of Austria, albeit without the broken chains, has been in use by the Republic of Austria since 1919. Between 1934 and the German annexation in 1938 Austria used a different coat of arms, which consisted of a double-headed eagle. The establishment of the Second Republic in 1945 saw the return of the original (First Republic) arms, with broken chains added to symbolise Austria's liberation.

The blazon of the Federal Arms of the Republic of Austria reads:

Gules a fess Argent, escutcheon on the breast of an eagle displayed Sable, langued Gules, beaked Or, crowned with a mural crown of three visible merlons Or, armed Or, dexter talon holding sickle, sinister talon holding hammer, both talons shackled with chain broken Argent.

The symbols and emblems used in the Austrian arms are as follows:

The Eagle: Austria's sovereignty (introduced 1919)

The escutcheon Emblem of Austria (late Middle Ages, reintroduced 1915)

The mural crown: The middle class (introduced 1919)

The sickle: Agriculture (introduced 1919)

The Hammer: Industry (introduced 1919)

The broken chains: Liberation from National Socialist dictatorship (added 1945).

Denominations in numerals are in all corners, in words top, centered.

Revers:

20 Schilling 1967

The Semmering railway, Austria, which starts at Gloggnitz and leads over the Semmering to Mürzzuschlag was the first mountain railway in Europe built with a standard gauge track. It is commonly referred to as the world's first true mountain railway, given the very difficult terrain and the considerable altitude difference that was mastered during its construction. It is still fully functional as a part of the South railway which is operated by the Austrian Federal Railways.

Semmering Semmering

The Semmering railway was constructed between 1848 and 1854 by some 20,000 workers under the project's designer and director Carl von Ghega born in Venice as Carlo Ghega in an Albanian family. The construction features 14 tunnels (among them the 1,431 m. vertex tunnel), 16 viaducts (several two-story) and over 100 curved stone bridges as well as 11 small iron bridges. The stations and the buildings for the supervisors were often built directly from the waste material produced in the course of tunnel construction.

Semmering

Across an overall track length of 41 km. the Semmering railway overcomes an altitude difference of 460 m.; on 60% of its length the gradient is 2.0-2.5% (equivalent to a 1-meter difference in altitude on a 40 m. route distance) and 16% exhibit a curvature radius of only 190 m. This was an entirely new technical dimension of railway construction, and new instruments and methods of surveying had to be developed to handle the resulting challenges. Also, new technologies were employed for the Engerth locomotives because the types in general use at this time could not handle the extreme gradients and turning radii.

Even while being built the Semmering railway was perceived as an effort of "landscape gardening", i.e. it attempted a harmonious combination of technology and nature. The unique travel experience which the Semmering railway offered contributed significantly to the original opening of the Semmering region for tourism. Numerous hotels and mansions are witnesses of this epoch. This enormous upswing to the turn of the century and the revaluation of the region as a winter sports area in the first third of the 20th Century were interrupted first by World War I and then by the changed recreational needs of the population. Therefore this unique culture landscape could be preserved with little change. A trip on the Semmering railway, which is in full use 150 years after its building, still impresses the traveller as a special experience by its varied landscape, the typical style of its mansions and the characteristic sequence of viaducts and tunnel constructions.

In 1998 the Semmering railway was added to the list of the UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Denominations in numerals are in all corners, in words top, centered.

Comments:

Issued in circulation: 04.11.1968

Designer: Roman Hellmann.

Born in 1921 in Schwarzach-St. Veit (Salzburg).

Graphic designer. Studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna. At the beginning of his work commissioned graphic examples for "Elin, Felten & Guilleaume", the Austrian Chamber of Commerce and the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna. From 1952 until his retirement, in 1978, banknote designer at the Austrian National Bank. Hellmann conducted in the National Bank the transition from employment freelance artist out to fix a salaried graphic designers. Designed all Austrian banknotes from 20 shillings 1956 to 50 schilling of 1970th. In addition, design of numerous test scores and advertising on behalf of "De La Rue Giori".