5 Pfennig - Kandern

Kandern is a small town in Baden, near the Swiss border, and like hundreds of German municipalities in 1917 it found itself issuing emergency coinage — Notgeld — because the imperial government's wartime metal requisitions had stripped circulation of copper and nickel. Zinc was the compromise material, cheap and available but prone to corrosion, which is why surviving examples in genuinely uncorroded condition are harder to find than the relatively modest original mintages might suggest.