5 Pfennig - Krotoschin

Krotoschin — now Krotoszyn in west-central Poland — issued this zinc notgeld piece in 1917 as German municipal authorities scrambled to replace copper and nickel coinage withdrawn for wartime metal requisitions. The imperial government's Hindenburg Program, launched in late 1916, accelerated the hoarding and melting of circulating small change to a degree that left ordinary commercial transactions in many provincial towns effectively coinless. Zinc was the stopgap material of necessity, not preference — it corrodes readily and strikes poorly, which explains the generally rough surfaces encountered on survivors today.