Peine's 1918 iron notgeld issue was a direct product of wartime metal requisitioning — by that point the Imperial government had been systematically stripping copper and nickel from the civilian economy for years, leaving municipalities across Germany to improvise with whatever base materials remained available. Iron was the pragmatic solution, though it rusted readily in circulation and survivors in clean condition are correspondingly scarce.
Peine's 1918 iron notgeld issue was a direct product of wartime metal requisitioning — by that point the Imperial government had been systematically stripping copper and nickel from the civilian economy for years, leaving municipalities across Germany to improvise with whatever base materials remained available. Iron was the pragmatic solution, though it rusted readily in circulation and survivors in clean condition are correspondingly scarce.