Dortmund's 1917 emergency coinage was authorized as German municipal authorities scrambled to address the chronic small-change shortage caused by wartime hoarding and metal requisitions. The silver composition is the anomaly here — most Notgeld of this period was struck in iron, zinc, or pressed paper precisely because silver had been stripped from circulation. A municipality issuing .900 silver emergency pfennig in 1917 was working against the grain of Reich policy, which had already demonetized silver subsidiary coinage two years earlier.
Dortmund's 1917 emergency coinage was authorized as German municipal authorities scrambled to address the chronic small-change shortage caused by wartime hoarding and metal requisitions. The silver composition is the anomaly here — most Notgeld of this period was struck in iron, zinc, or pressed paper precisely because silver had been stripped from circulation. A municipality issuing .900 silver emergency pfennig in 1917 was working against the grain of Reich policy, which had already demonetized silver subsidiary coinage two years earlier.