5 Pfennig - Rositz Braunkohlenwerke A.G.

Rositzer Braunkohlenwerke A.G. was a brown coal mining operation in the Rositz basin of Thuringia, a lignite-rich region that supplied fuel to central Germany's industrial heartland well into the twentieth century. Like many large German industrial concerns of the World War I period, the company issued its own notgeld coinage in zinc when the wartime metal shortage drained small change from everyday circulation — workers needed a medium of exchange at company stores and canteens, and the Reichsbank could not supply one.

Zinc was the de facto fallback material once copper and nickel were requisitioned for munitions production after 1915.