50 Pfennig - Landau

Landau's 1917 zinc Notgeld issue belongs to the first wave of municipally authorized emergency coinage that flooded German markets after the Imperial government's wartime metal requisitions stripped copper and nickel from civilian circulation. Zinc was the compromise material — abundant, unstrategic, and deeply unpopular with merchants who found it prone to rapid oxidation and dimensional distortion in transit.

Landau, a fortified Palatinate city with a long history of French occupation, had the administrative infrastructure to organize local coinage quickly. The Funck 266.3 designation places this among multiple die variants recorded for the issue.