10 Pfennig - Freudenstadt

Freudenstadt issued this iron notgeld during the acute small-change shortage that gripped Germany in the final year of the First World War, when copper and nickel had long been requisitioned for military production and the Reichsbank could not keep subsidiary coinage in circulation. Municipal and private issuers across the German states stepped in to fill the gap, producing thousands of local emergency issues in iron, zinc, and pressed paper.

Iron was a poor substitute — prone to rust, rejected by vending machines, and unpopular with the public. Most surviving examples show surface oxidation regardless of handling history.