50 Pfennigs - Crailsheim Wilh. Habermeier

Habermeier was a hardware and ironware merchant in Crailsheim, a small Württemberg market town. This notgeld piece dates to the acute small-change shortage of 1918, when the Imperial German government's wartime requisition of copper and nickel had stripped the coinage system of its lower denominations almost entirely, forcing municipalities and private businesses to issue their own emergency tokens. That a hardware dealer was among the issuers is fitting — iron was one of the few metals still available in commercial quantities, and Habermeier presumably had direct access to it.