10 Pfennig - Hengersberg Josef Weidenbeck

Hengersberg is a small market town in Lower Bavaria, and this zinc piece is a Notgeld token — emergency private currency issued during the acute coin shortages that gripped Germany in the First World War and its immediate aftermath. Josef Weidenbeck was almost certainly a local merchant or innkeeper who issued scrip redeemable at his own establishment, a practice tolerated by authorities who had little practical alternative. Zinc was the material of necessity; copper and nickel had been requisitioned for the war effort years earlier.