5 Pfennig - Nürnberg A. Herbst and M. Ostertag Baugeschäft

Notgeld issued by a private construction firm — Baugeschäft translates directly as building contractor — places this piece among the more unusual categories of German emergency coinage. During the acute small-change shortages of 1917–1921, municipalities, businesses, and even individual employers issued their own tokens to pay workers and facilitate commerce when official coinage had effectively disappeared from circulation. That a Nürnberg construction company felt compelled to mint its own 5 Pfennig pieces speaks to how thoroughly the crisis had disrupted everyday transactions at the street level.