10 Pfennig - Kempen, Posen

Kempen in Posen — today Kępno in western Poland — issued notgeld during the early Weimar period when the central government's coin supply had effectively collapsed under wartime requisitioning and postwar monetary chaos. Zinc was the pragmatic choice: copper and nickel had been consumed by the war effort years earlier. This particular municipality sat in contested territory; the region was transferred to the newly reconstituted Polish state under the Treaty of Versailles in 1920, meaning the window during which Kempen could issue German municipal coinage was administratively brief.