10 Pfennig - Bottrop

Bottrop's 1917 zinc notgeld was a direct response to the German Imperial government's wartime metal requisitions, which pulled copper and nickel coinage out of circulation for munitions production. Municipalities across the Rhineland and Ruhr issued their own emergency pieces to keep small transactions functioning — Bottrop among hundreds of others. Zinc was the compromise material: cheap, available, and deeply unpopular with the public, who found it corroded quickly and felt nothing like real money.

The Funck 54.1 designation places this among the earliest documented Bottrop issues, suggesting it entered circulation in the first wave of municipal authorization rather than as a later supplemental striking.