25 Pfennig - Rothenburg ob der Tauber Herterich Brunnen

Rothenburg ob der Tauber issued this notgeld piece during the acute coin shortage that followed Germany's post-WWI economic disruption, when municipal and commercial authorities across the country were forced to produce their own emergency coinage. Iron was a practical concession to scarcity — copper and nickel remained constrained by materials shortages that stretched well past the Armistice. The Herterich Brunnen, the Renaissance fountain at the town's market square, was a deliberate choice of local iconography, part of a broader civic strategy to market Rothenburg's medieval character to a growing tourist trade even as the wider economy deteriorated.