Flensburg issued its own emergency coinage in 1917 as the Imperial war economy stripped zinc, copper, and nickel from civilian circulation to feed munitions production. These Notgeld pieces were a municipal stopgap — authorized locally to keep small transactions functioning when Reichsmünze-struck coins had effectively vanished from everyday commerce. Flensburg's position as a border city with a mixed Danish-German population gave its wartime issues a particular administrative edge; the question of which authority actually governed daily life there would not be resolved until the 1920 Schleswig plebiscite split the duchy.
Flensburg issued its own emergency coinage in 1917 as the Imperial war economy stripped zinc, copper, and nickel from civilian circulation to feed munitions production. These Notgeld pieces were a municipal stopgap — authorized locally to keep small transactions functioning when Reichsmünze-struck coins had effectively vanished from everyday commerce. Flensburg's position as a border city with a mixed Danish-German population gave its wartime issues a particular administrative edge; the question of which authority actually governed daily life there would not be resolved until the 1920 Schleswig plebiscite split the duchy.