5 Pfennig - Gunzenhausen

Gunzenhausen's 1917 notgeld issue belongs to the first wave of municipal emergency coinage that swept German towns after the Imperial government requisitioned copper and nickel for war production. Zinc was the fallback — cheap, available, and deeply unpopular with the public, who associated it with wartime privation. Smaller Bavarian municipalities like Gunzenhausen were effectively left to solve their own small-change shortages independently, producing coins with no central design authority overseeing them.

The Funck catalogue remains the authoritative reference for these zinc municipals, and the .1 suffix on this type indicates the primary variety — subsequent varieties typically reflect minor die differences or edge treatments.