50 Pfennig - Furtwangen

Furtwangen issued this zinc notgeld piece in 1918 as the Imperial German military's requisition of copper and nickel for shell casings had gutted the Reichsbank's ability to supply subsidiary coinage. Towns across the Black Forest region were effectively left to solve their own small-change crisis. Furtwangen, a clockmaking center whose industrial base had been partially redirected toward war production, was among hundreds of municipalities that filled the gap with locally authorized emergency money.

The Funck 148.4 reference places this among the documented zinc issues, zinc being the least desirable of the substitute metals — prone to corrosion and surface degradation in circulation.