20 Pfennig - Bergedorf

Bergedorf had only been fully Prussian for fifty years when this token was struck. The city was the last jointly administered territory in Europe — shared between Hamburg and Lübeck under a peculiar medieval arrangement — until Hamburg bought out Lübeck's share in 1868. By 1917, zinc had replaced copper and nickel across German municipal issues as the war consumed base metals at every level of the economy, driving hundreds of German towns to authorize their own notgeld coinage under emergency provisions.