10 Pfennig - Rudolstadt

Rudolstadt's 1918 zinc notgeld emerged from the same municipal desperation that drove hundreds of German towns to strike their own emergency coinage as imperial metal requisitions stripped the Reichsbank's subsidiary coin supply bare. Zinc was the fallback material precisely because copper and nickel had been diverted to the war effort years earlier. The principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt itself ceased to exist just weeks after this piece entered circulation — Prince Günther Viktor abdicated in November 1918 alongside the other German monarchs, ending a dynasty that had survived since 1552.