2 Pfennigs - Friedrichswerth Eduard Meyer

Eduard Meyer's Friedrichswerth notgeld emerged from the acute small-change famine that gripped Germany from 1916 onward, as wartime metal requisitions stripped copper and nickel from civilian circulation entirely. Municipal authorities and private issuers across the country filled the void with locally produced zinc and iron pieces that the Reichsbank tolerated rather than sanctioned. Meyer's issue is a minor entry in an enormous field — Hasselmann's catalog alone documents hundreds of comparable Thuringian private issues from this single year.