Tübingen's 1920 iron Pfennig belongs to the vast wave of German municipal notgeld issued when postwar metal shortages and currency chaos left local governments scrambling to produce their own small-denomination coinage. Tübingen, a university town in Württemberg with no minting tradition of its own, commissioned pieces through commercial die-cutters — a common workaround that explains the considerable die variety documented across this series, as reflected in the Funck and Menzel reference numbers.
Tübingen's 1920 iron Pfennig belongs to the vast wave of German municipal notgeld issued when postwar metal shortages and currency chaos left local governments scrambling to produce their own small-denomination coinage. Tübingen, a university town in Württemberg with no minting tradition of its own, commissioned pieces through commercial die-cutters — a common workaround that explains the considerable die variety documented across this series, as reflected in the Funck and Menzel reference numbers.