1 Pfennig - Tilsit

Tilsit — now Sovetsk, Kaliningrad Oblast — issued notgeld coinage in 1918 as the German Imperial economy buckled under wartime metal shortages and the collapse of centralized supply. Iron was the material of necessity by this point; copper and nickel had been commandeered for munitions years earlier. Municipal and local authorities across Germany and occupied territories filled the gap with whatever base metals remained available.

Tilsit sits on the Memel River, the same town where Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I signed their famous 1807 treaties aboard a raft. By 1918 it was a Prussian administrative center scrambling to keep small change in circulation as the Kaiser's government disintegrated around it.