50 Pfennig - Münsterberg

Münsterberg — today Ziębice in southwestern Poland — issued this notgeld piece through its municipal savings bank during the acute coin shortage that followed Germany's postwar economic dislocation. Iron was chosen not for its durability but because aluminum and zinc allocations were already strained by industrial demand. The Stadtsparkasse, rather than the municipality itself, served as the issuing authority, which was common in Silesian towns where savings institutions held greater public trust than local government offices.

Silesia changed hands politically in 1921, the same year this piece circulated, as the League of Nations partition divided the region between Germany and Poland following the Third Silesian Uprising.