50 Pfennig - Kaiserslautern

Kaiserslautern's 1917 iron notgeld was a direct product of the wartime metal requisitions that stripped Germany's coinage system down to its bones — copper, nickel, and brass all redirected to munitions production, leaving municipalities to fill the gap themselves. By mid-war, hundreds of German cities had received authorization to issue their own emergency coinage, each procuring whatever base metal remained locally available. Iron was the last resort.

The Funck reference places this among the documented Pfalz regional issues, a cataloguing lineage that has helped distinguish the many near-identical municipal iron pieces that might otherwise be indistinguishable by physical inspection alone.