10 Pfennig - Hersfeld

Hersfeld's zinc notgeld issues were emergency municipal coinage struck during the acute metal shortages of World War I, when the German imperial government had requisitioned copper and nickel for the war effort. Cities and towns were left to fend for themselves, producing local substitutes in whatever material remained available. Zinc was the default for dozens of smaller municipalities that lacked the political leverage to secure better alloys.

The Funck reference places this among the better-documented Hessian municipal issues, though Hersfeld itself was a modest market town whose notgeld saw genuine circulation rather than the speculative collector issues that proliferated after 1920.