5 Pfennig - Quakenbrück

Quakenbrück, a small Lower Saxon town of no particular industrial weight, issued this zinc notgeld piece in 1917 as the Allied naval blockade strangled Germany's access to copper and nickel. Municipal authorities across the Reich were authorized — and in many cases simply compelled by necessity — to produce their own emergency coinage that year. Zinc was the compromise metal: abundant enough domestically, miserable to strike cleanly, and prone to the surface corrosion that plagues surviving examples today.