10 Pfennig - Rotenburg

Rotenburg an der Wümme issued this zinc notgeld piece in 1917, when the Imperial German war economy had stripped copper and nickel from civilian coinage with the same thoroughness it applied to church bells and household metalware. Zinc was the compromise material, cheap and workable but prone to corrosion — which accounts for the difficulty in finding surviving examples without surface degradation. The Kreis (district) rather than a municipality or private firm was the issuing authority here, a relatively common arrangement in Lower Saxony.