1/2 Heller - Wilhelm II

German East Africa's subsidiary coinage was struck at the Berlin mint under authority of the Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft, the chartered company that administered the territory before the Imperial German government assumed direct colonial control in 1891. By the time this half-Heller was issued, the colony was still absorbing the fiscal shock of the Maji Maji Rebellion, which erupted in 1905 and ultimately cost Germany an estimated 200,000 African lives and a significant treasury expenditure to suppress.