4 Pfennigs

Göttingen's copper pfennig issues of 1621 were emergency municipal coinage struck during the Kipper- und Wipperzeit — the catastrophic currency debasement crisis that swept the German states in the early 1620s. Larger territorial mints were flooding circulation with wildly debased silver, so smaller civic authorities responded by issuing their own copper fractions to fill the gap left by vanishing low-denomination coinage. Göttingen, as a mid-tier Lower Saxon trading town, had both the civic authority and the practical need to act independently.

The Kipper crisis collapsed so quickly that many of these municipal issues circulated only briefly before monetary reforms swept them out.