The catastrophic floods of September 1920 which devastated large areas of Austria were very little noticed outside the Federal Republic. Nevertheless, the damage which they inflicted was of such magnitude that federal relief had to be provided and it was decided to raise funds by issuing a special set of 20 overprinted stamps on 1 March 1921.
The designs of the two previous definitive sets of 1919 and 1921 were again selected, and printed in new colours. Unlike the Carinthian Plebiscite overprinted set, the 'Parliament Building' stamps were not issued imperforate but were line perforated 12˝, whilst all the other values were comb perforated 12.5. Two sizes of overprint were employed: the smaller Type I on the low values (up to 2Kr) on ordinary wove paper, except for the 1Kr and 1˝Kr values which were on a shiny-surfaced paper; and the larger Type II overprint on the high values 2˝Kr to 20Kr which are printed on granite paper. Some catalogues show some of the low values as printed on coloured papers; the list below is based on visual inspection of actual stamps! The 1Kr stamp has the usual 'H' variety in the eagle's wing, the 2Kr stamp is known with the "1920" of the overprint omitted and also as a vertical pair with imperf between, whilst the 4Kr value may be found with the name of the designer J.F. Renner missing from the bottom margin of the stamp. Once again, the bi-coloured values were printed in two operations. As for the Plebiscite issue, alignment marks were provided for the dual-colour printings. A total of 400,000 complete sets was printed; some values had larger printings eg 530,000 of the 1K. These stamps were sold at three times face value, the extra sums raised being spent on the flood relief. The issue was valid until 31 March 1921 - ie, only for one month.
ANK | Face | Colour | Number |
321 | 5h | grey on off-white paper | 324,000 |
322 | 10h | scarlet on pale rose paper | 324,000 |
323 | 15h | khaki on slightly yellow (ochre?) paper | 324,000 |
324 | 20h | dark bluish green on blue paper | 396,000 |
325 | 25h | violet on off-white paper | 324,000 |
326 | 30h | brown on buff paper | 300,000 |
327 | 40h | red on slightly yellow paper | 324,000 |
328 | 50h | dark greenish blue on blue paper | 420,000 |
329 | 60h | olive on blue paper | 300,000 |
330 | 80h | red | 495,000 |
331 | 1Kr | light brown | 410,000 |
332 | 2Kr | pale blue | 430,000 |
The 2˝Kr upwards are in the "Parliament" design | |||
333 | 2˝Kr | brownish red on granite paper | 302,000 |
334 | 3Kr | blue frame, green centre on granite paper | 302,000 |
335 | 4Kr | red frame, violet centre on granite paper | 302,000 |
336 | 5Kr | blue on granite paper | 302,000 |
337 | 7˝Kr | green on granite paper | 302,000 |
338 | 10Kr | green frame, brownish-red centre on granite paper | 302,000 |
339 | 20Kr | pale violet frame, light brown centre on granite paper | 302,000 |