5 Pfennig - Menden

Menden's 1919 iron notgeld issue belongs to the enormous wave of municipal emergency coinage that flooded Germany in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, when chronic metal shortages and Reichsbank coin hoarding left towns responsible for their own small-change supply. Iron was the material of necessity — zinc and aluminum had been consumed by the war effort, and copper was politically radioactive as a strategic metal under Allied supervision of German industry.

The Funck reference places this squarely within documented Westphalian municipal issues, a region particularly active in notgeld production given its dense industrial population and corresponding demand for low-denomination exchange tokens.