Naila is a small industrial town in Upper Franconia, Bavaria, whose wartime notgeld emerged from the same crisis that paralyzed municipal economies across Germany in 1918 — a catastrophic shortage of small change caused by the hoarding of metal coinage as raw material values outstripped face values. Iron was the fallback precisely because it had no such premium. Cities issued their own emergency money not by legal right but by practical necessity, and the Reich largely looked the other way.
Naila is a small industrial town in Upper Franconia, Bavaria, whose wartime notgeld emerged from the same crisis that paralyzed municipal economies across Germany in 1918 — a catastrophic shortage of small change caused by the hoarding of metal coinage as raw material values outstripped face values. Iron was the fallback precisely because it had no such premium. Cities issued their own emergency money not by legal right but by practical necessity, and the Reich largely looked the other way.