5 Pfennig - Apolda

Apolda issued this zinc notgeld piece in 1918 as the German imperial coinage system buckled under wartime metal requisitioning. Copper and nickel had been diverted to military production years earlier, leaving municipalities across Thuringia to authorize their own emergency small change. Apolda, a textile town best known for its hosiery and bell foundries, was among dozens of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach communities that filled the gap independently rather than waiting on central authority.

Zinc was the default material precisely because it had minimal strategic value to the war effort.