5 Mark - Altenburg

Altenburg issued this porcelain notgeld piece during the acute coin shortage that followed World War I, when metal supplies remained under tight postwar restriction and municipal authorities across Thuringia turned to the Meissen and Rosenthal factories for emergency coinage. Brown-glazed porcelain pieces like this one were produced in relatively small quantities for actual circulation, unlike the later purely decorative issues made for collectors — a distinction that separates serious notgeld scholarship from the souvenir trade.

The Scheuch reference places this squarely among the documented Thuringian municipal issues, not a private fantasy piece.