10 Pfennig - Heiligenhafen

Heiligenhafen, a small fishing town on the Baltic coast of Schleswig-Holstein, issued zinc notgeld during the acute coin shortages of World War I, when the imperial government had systematically withdrawn copper and nickel coinage for war production. Municipal authorities across Germany scrambled to fill the gap, and hundreds of towns like Heiligenhafen issued their own emergency pieces through local authorization. Zinc was the material of last resort — cheap, available, and deeply unpopular with the public for its tendency to corrode in pocket moisture.