Fürth's 1917 emergency coinage was struck because the imperial government had systematically stripped copper and nickel from circulation for war production, leaving municipalities scrambling to fill the gap with whatever base metals were available. Zinc, plated to approximate the appearance of more valuable alloys, was the pragmatic solution adopted by dozens of Bavarian cities that year. Fürth was among the more industrially capable of them, home to significant metalworking capacity that made local notgeld production relatively straightforward.
Fürth's 1917 emergency coinage was struck because the imperial government had systematically stripped copper and nickel from circulation for war production, leaving municipalities scrambling to fill the gap with whatever base metals were available. Zinc, plated to approximate the appearance of more valuable alloys, was the pragmatic solution adopted by dozens of Bavarian cities that year. Fürth was among the more industrially capable of them, home to significant metalworking capacity that made local notgeld production relatively straightforward.