50 Pfennig - Aachen

Aachen's 1920 iron notgeld coinage was a direct product of the postwar metal shortage that left German municipalities scrambling to fill the void left by hoarded silver and copper. The city had particular reason for urgency: occupied by Belgian forces from 1918 under the Versailles provisions governing the Rhineland, Aachen operated under unusual administrative constraints that made coordinating with central monetary authorities more complicated than it was for unoccupied German cities.

The Funck 1.11A designation places this among the catalogued die varieties, distinguished from related Aachen issues of the same period by specific obverse or edge characteristics documented by Funck's systematic survey of Rhineland notgeld.