10 Pfennig - Wittlich

Wittlich issued this notgeld piece in 1919 as the postwar German economy buckled under the strain of demobilization and the Allied blockade's lingering effects on raw material supply. Iron was a pragmatic and deeply ironic choice — the same metal that had consumed a generation now pressed into service as small change because silver and copper were simply unavailable through normal channels. The Wittlich district, situated in the Moselle wine country, was by 1919 under French occupation as part of the Rhineland buffer zone provisions of the armistice.