10 Pfennig - Eisenstein Wilhelm Pfeifer

Eisenstein — now Železná Ruda in the Czech Republic — was a glassmaking and mining settlement in the Bohemian Forest whose wartime labor shortages and metal rationing made small-denomination notgeld an administrative necessity. Wilhelm Pfeifer was almost certainly a local merchant or innkeeper issuing this token to manage small change within a tight commercial radius. Brass-plated zinc was the compromise material of the emergency coinage period, when copper and nickel had long since been commandeered for the war effort.