10 Pfennig - Strehlen

Strehlen's municipal savings bank issued this zinc notgeld piece in 1917, when the Imperial German war economy had systematically stripped copper and nickel from civilian coinage to feed munitions production. Zinc was the fallback — cheap, abundant, and deeply unpopular with the public, who found it corroded quickly in pocket wear. Hundreds of German towns issued similar emergency fractions that year under the same material constraints, Strehlen among them.