10 Pfennig - Calw

Calw issued this iron notgeld piece in 1918 as the imperial coinage system buckled under wartime metal requisitioning. Copper and nickel had been diverted to munitions production years earlier, forcing hundreds of German municipalities to commission their own emergency small change. Iron was the material of last resort — cheap, abundant, and deeply unpopular with the public, who understood exactly what it signified about the war's trajectory.

The Funck and Menzel catalogue numbers confirm this as one of several denominations Calw put into circulation that year. The city, a small Württemberg town on the Nagold River, was hardly unusual in this — but the specific die variety designated .4 in both Menzel editions suggests at least minor production variants exist within the type.