50 Pfennig - Weiler

Weiler's 1917 zinc Notgeld issue belongs to the vast municipal emergency coinage program that emerged when wartime metal requisitions stripped German towns of the copper and nickel they'd relied on for small change. By mid-1917 the Imperial government had effectively commandeered both metals for munitions, leaving market towns like Weiler to fend for themselves through locally authorized zinc substitutes.

Zinc was nobody's first choice — it corrodes readily in circulation and strikes poorly on worn dies.