Calw issued this iron notgeld piece in 1918 as military requisitioning stripped German municipalities of copper and zinc stocks needed for shell casings and other ordnance components. The switch to iron was not a local quirk but a nationwide emergency measure, coordinated under Reich directives that left individual cities scrambling to source and strike their own emergency coinage. Calw, a small Württemberg market town, produced multiple die variants — reflected in the paired Funck references — suggesting the city contracted with more than one die cutter or ran successive production runs as the original dies wore.
Calw issued this iron notgeld piece in 1918 as military requisitioning stripped German municipalities of copper and zinc stocks needed for shell casings and other ordnance components. The switch to iron was not a local quirk but a nationwide emergency measure, coordinated under Reich directives that left individual cities scrambling to source and strike their own emergency coinage. Calw, a small Württemberg market town, produced multiple die variants — reflected in the paired Funck references — suggesting the city contracted with more than one die cutter or ran successive production runs as the original dies wore.