50 Pfennig - Gardelegen

Gardelegen issued this iron notgeld piece during the acute small-change shortage that gripped Germany in the closing years of World War I, when copper and nickel had been requisitioned for war production and official coinage effectively collapsed at the local level. District and municipal authorities across the German states were left to fill the gap themselves, producing emergency issues in whatever base materials remained available. Iron was the unsentimental solution.

Kreis Gardelegen, a rural administrative district in the Altmark region of Prussia, sits among hundreds of similar issuers — its pieces circulated strictly within the district and were redeemable only locally.