10 Pfennig - Schwarzburg-Sondershausen

Schwarzburg-Sondershausen was one of Germany's smallest sovereign states — fewer than 90,000 subjects at its dissolution — and its 1918 iron notgeld issues came in the final months before the principality ceased to exist entirely. Prince Karl Günther abdicated in November 1918 along with the cascade of German monarchs swept out by revolution and armistice, ending a ruling house that had governed the Schwarzburg territories since the sixteenth century. Iron was the wartime substitute forced on German mints after copper and nickel were requisitioned for the war effort from 1915 onward.