Weida's iron notgeld of 1918 was an administrative necessity, not a civic gesture. The Imperial German government had been systematically withdrawing copper and nickel coinage since 1915 for war production, and by 1918 the small-change shortage in provincial towns had become acute enough that municipalities were authorized — sometimes only retroactively — to issue their own emergency pieces. Iron was the compromise material: abundant, cheap, but deeply unpopular with the public, who knew it rusted in pocket and purse alike.
Weida's iron notgeld of 1918 was an administrative necessity, not a civic gesture. The Imperial German government had been systematically withdrawing copper and nickel coinage since 1915 for war production, and by 1918 the small-change shortage in provincial towns had become acute enough that municipalities were authorized — sometimes only retroactively — to issue their own emergency pieces. Iron was the compromise material: abundant, cheap, but deeply unpopular with the public, who knew it rusted in pocket and purse alike.