5 Pfennig

Northeim's magistrat turned to Gebrüder Jänecke — a Hannover printing house better known for commercial and fine-art work — when the wartime metal shortage made even the smallest coins effectively unavailable by 1917. Municipal emergency notes at this denomination were a Germany-wide phenomenon that year, issued under provisions that allowed local authorities to plug the fractional currency gap the Reichsbank had no practical means of filling from Berlin.

The official stamp served as the primary authentication against counterfeiting — an inexpensive safeguard for a note whose face value was genuinely trivial, but whose absence from daily commerce caused real disruption at markets and tram stops.