10 Pfennig - Sömmerda Dreyse and Collenbusch

Dreyse & Collenbusch was the Sömmerda weapons manufacturer built on the work of Johann Nikolaus von Dreyse, inventor of the needle gun — the bolt-action rifle that gave Prussia a decisive tactical edge at Königgrätz in 1866. Like many German industrial firms during the First World War, the company issued its own notgeld when small change disappeared from circulation almost overnight, hoarded by a public that had stopped trusting the currency's future purchasing power. Zinc was the material of necessity; copper and nickel had gone to the war effort.