Siersleben was a small mining community in the Mansfeld district of Saxony-Anhalt, and this iron notgeld piece was issued in 1920 during the acute coin shortage that followed Germany's defeat in the First World War. The imperial coinage system had collapsed, copper and nickel were diverted to war production and never fully returned to circulation, and hundreds of municipalities — many as small as Siersleben — were left to fill the gap themselves. Iron was the pragmatic substitute: cheap, available, and already familiar from wartime emergency coinages.
The Funck 498.2 designation places this within a known local series, distinguishing it from at least one variant.
Siersleben was a small mining community in the Mansfeld district of Saxony-Anhalt, and this iron notgeld piece was issued in 1920 during the acute coin shortage that followed Germany's defeat in the First World War. The imperial coinage system had collapsed, copper and nickel were diverted to war production and never fully returned to circulation, and hundreds of municipalities — many as small as Siersleben — were left to fill the gap themselves. Iron was the pragmatic substitute: cheap, available, and already familiar from wartime emergency coinages.
The Funck 498.2 designation places this within a known local series, distinguishing it from at least one variant.