5 Pfennig - Hohensalza

Hohensalza — today Inowrocław in north-central Poland — was the administrative center of a Prussian district that found itself scrambling for small change during the First World War, when imperial authorities hoarded copper and eventually iron for war production. This piece is Notgeld in the strictest sense: emergency coinage issued at the district level to fill the vacuum left by the disappearance of Reichsmünzen from everyday commerce. The Kreis, not the Reich, bore responsibility for keeping local transactions moving.

Iron was the fallback once copper was requisitioned, and pieces like this corroded readily in circulation, making clean survivors considerably scarcer than raw mintage figures suggest.