10 Pfennig - Altdorf

Altdorf bei Nürnberg issued this zinc notgeld in 1917 as German municipalities scrambled to fill the void left by hoarded copper and nickel coinage — both metals requisitioned for the war effort. The imperial government had effectively stripped local circulation of its small denominations, forcing towns to improvise. Altdorf, a university town whose institution had been absorbed into Erlangen in 1809, was by this point little more than an administrative backwater, making its independent coinage issue an administrative curiosity rather than any assertion of civic ambition.