10 Pfennig

Zeulenroda's 1916 Notgeld issue belongs to the first wave of municipal emergency money that swept German towns after the Imperial government's wartime hoarding regulations drained small-denomination coins from everyday commerce. Pfennig coins — brass, copper, iron — disappeared almost overnight as metal became a military resource. Hundreds of municipalities printed their own stopgap paper rather than wait for a central solution that was slow in coming.

Stadtgemeinde Zeulenroda, a small textile town in Thuringia, was no exception. These notes were redeemable in principle but depended entirely on local goodwill and municipal solvency — neither of which was guaranteed by 1916.