10 Pfennig - Welzheim

Welzheim's 1918 iron notgeld emerged from the same wartime metal shortage that stripped German municipal authorities of copper and nickel and forced hundreds of small administrative bodies — Amtskörperschaften among them — to issue their own emergency coinage. By late 1918, the imperial government had requisitioned non-ferrous metals so aggressively for munitions production that even pfennig denominations could no longer be struck in their traditional alloys. Iron was the fallback, and poorly suited to it: these pieces corrode readily, which explains why problem-free survivors are genuinely scarce despite the large quantities originally produced.