Ettlingen's 1920 notgeld issue belongs to the massive wave of municipally-issued emergency coinage that flooded Germany following the First World War, when the Reichsbank's withdrawal of silver and copper from circulation left towns scrambling to fill the gap with whatever metal was available. Zinc was a wartime compromise material, widely used because strategic metals had been commandeered for munitions production and never fully returned to the civilian economy.
Ettlingen's 1920 notgeld issue belongs to the massive wave of municipally-issued emergency coinage that flooded Germany following the First World War, when the Reichsbank's withdrawal of silver and copper from circulation left towns scrambling to fill the gap with whatever metal was available. Zinc was a wartime compromise material, widely used because strategic metals had been commandeered for munitions production and never fully returned to the civilian economy.