10 Pfennig - Unterweserstädte

These three North Sea port cities — Bremerhaven, Lehe, and Geestemünde — issued this zinc notgeld jointly in 1919 as the postwar currency crisis left Germany's small-denomination coinage chronically short. The Unterweserstädte designation reflects their geographic and commercial interdependence along the lower Weser estuary, though administratively they remained separate until the Prussian state merged Lehe and Geestemünde into Wesermünde in 1924. Bremerhaven held out as an enclave of the Free City of Bremen until 1939, when the Nazi government finally consolidated the entire mouth of the Weser under a single municipal authority.