5 Pfennig - Aalen

Aalen's 1917 zinc notgeld emerged from the same wartime metals crisis that stripped German municipalities of their copper and nickel coinage almost overnight. By mid-1917, Reichsbank coin had largely vanished from small transactions — hoarded, melted, or absorbed by the war economy — leaving towns like Aalen to fund their own emergency issues through local authority. Zinc was the compromise material: abundant enough to spare, despised enough to circulate rather than disappear into a sock drawer.