Boppard's 1919 iron Pfennig issues belong to the vast wave of German municipal notgeld struck as the imperial coinage system collapsed in the wake of defeat and revolution. Boppard, a small Rhine town that had passed between French and Prussian control through the Napoleonic period before settling into Prussian administration in 1815, was among hundreds of municipalities forced to supply their own small change when central authority could no longer guarantee it.
Iron was the default emergency material precisely because copper and nickel had been consumed by the war effort.
Boppard's 1919 iron Pfennig issues belong to the vast wave of German municipal notgeld struck as the imperial coinage system collapsed in the wake of defeat and revolution. Boppard, a small Rhine town that had passed between French and Prussian control through the Napoleonic period before settling into Prussian administration in 1815, was among hundreds of municipalities forced to supply their own small change when central authority could no longer guarantee it.
Iron was the default emergency material precisely because copper and nickel had been consumed by the war effort.