5 Pfennig - Lauingen

Lauingen issued this zinc notgeld piece in 1917 under the same wartime metal shortages that stripped German municipal governments of copper and nickel for civilian coinage. The city sits on the Danube in Bavaria and is best known as the birthplace of Albertus Magnus — a connection local authorities occasionally leaned on for civic identity during a period when the central government was requisitioning everything of metallic value. Zinc was the compromise material: abundant enough, workable, but prone to corrosion, which explains why surviving examples in clean condition are harder to locate than the mintage numbers might suggest.