10 Pfennig - Belgern

Belgern, a small town on the Elbe in Saxony, issued this piece under the emergency coinage programs that proliferated across Germany from 1916 onward as the Imperial war economy stripped copper and nickel from domestic circulation. Iron was the compromise material — cheap, abundant, and deeply unpopular, as it rusted in pocket and purse alike. Thousands of German municipalities issued their own Notgeld during this period, and Belgern's issue is among the more obscure, reflecting a town with little economic weight but the same administrative obligation to keep small transactions moving.