4 Pfenninge - William I

Prussia adopted a unified coinage system in stages following the establishment of the North German Confederation in 1867, and these copper Pfenninge occupied an awkward transitional position — struck under Prussian authority but increasingly redundant as Bismarck's administration pushed toward the imperial decimal system that would arrive with the Reichsmark reform of 1873. The span of dates covers William I's reign from Prussian king through the proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles in January 1871, after which this denomination had no future.