25 Pfennig - Aachen

Aachen's iron notgeld coinage of 1920 belongs to the wave of emergency municipal issues struck across Germany as the postwar metal shortage and economic dislocation left ordinary commerce without adequate small change. The city had been under Allied occupation since November 1918 — it sat directly in the Rhineland zone — which added administrative complexity to an already disrupted monetary supply. Iron was the material of last resort, prone to corrosion, which accounts for the difficulty in finding uncorroded survivors today.