10 Pfennig - Marienwerder

Marienwerder's 1918 iron notgeld emerged from the same wartime metal shortages that stripped German municipal authorities of any viable coinage stock — copper and nickel had been commandeered for shell casings and military hardware years earlier. The city, situated along the Vistula in what was then West Prussia, would not remain German territory for long; the 1920 Marienwerder plebiscite, one of the few post-Versailles votes that actually returned a contested district to Germany, rendered these emergency pieces relics of a political geography that barely survived the decade.