Düren's zinc notgeld issues of 1917 emerged from the same wartime metal shortage that stripped Germany's coinage system down to iron and zinc — copper and nickel had been redirected to munitions production by 1916 under imperial requisition orders. Municipal authorities across the Rhineland were left to fill the gap with locally authorized emergency pieces, and Düren was among hundreds of cities that did exactly that.
The Funck reference places this among the documented Westphalian municipal issues, cross-indexed in both Menzel editions with only minor die variation between catalog numbers.
Düren's zinc notgeld issues of 1917 emerged from the same wartime metal shortage that stripped Germany's coinage system down to iron and zinc — copper and nickel had been redirected to munitions production by 1916 under imperial requisition orders. Municipal authorities across the Rhineland were left to fill the gap with locally authorized emergency pieces, and Düren was among hundreds of cities that did exactly that.
The Funck reference places this among the documented Westphalian municipal issues, cross-indexed in both Menzel editions with only minor die variation between catalog numbers.