10 Pfennig - Gross-Wartenberg

Groß-Wartenberg — today Syców in southwestern Poland — issued this iron Notgeld piece during the acute small-change shortage that gripped Germany in the early Weimar period. The city sat in Silesia, a region already politically unstable in 1920, with the Upper Silesian plebiscite just months away and supply chains for raw coinage metal severely disrupted. Iron was the material of necessity, not choice; copper and nickel were still being diverted or hoarded well after the Armistice.