25 Pfennig - Isny im Allgäu

Isny im Allgäu issued this zinc notgeld piece in 1918 as the Imperial German economy buckled under wartime metal requisitions — copper and nickel had long been redirected to the military, forcing municipalities across the Reich to produce their own emergency coinage. Zinc was the compromise material: abundant enough to be practical, undesirable enough to be left alone by the procurement authorities.

Isny was a small Swabian town with a population well under five thousand at the time, which makes the administrative effort to produce a catalogued, referenced type all the more striking. The Funck reference places this among thousands of similar municipal issues, few of which circulated beyond their town of origin.