10 Pfennig - Wohlau

Wohlau — today Wołów in Lower Silesia — was a small Prussian administrative town, and its Stadtsparkasse issued this piece during the acute coin shortage that swept German municipalities in 1918. The Imperial government's wartime metal requisitions had pulled copper and nickel out of circulation almost entirely, forcing hundreds of local savings banks, towns, and even private firms to issue their own iron and zinc Notgeld simply to make change.

Iron Notgeld from this period corrodes readily, and undamaged examples are harder to find than the mintage figures suggest.