50 Pfennig - Weissenfels an der Saale

Weißenfels issued this iron notgeld pfennig in 1920 as postwar metal shortages and rampant inflation made conventional coinage impractical for everyday transactions. The city, historically a center of shoe manufacturing in Saxony, was among hundreds of German municipalities forced to produce their own emergency coinage during the 1919–1922 period when the Reichsbank could not reliably supply adequate small change. Iron was the compromise material of the moment — cheap, available, but deeply unpopular with the public, who correctly anticipated it would corrode in circulation.