5 Pfennig - Rügenwalde

Rügenwalde, a small Pomeranian town on the Baltic coast, issued iron notgeld during World War I when the imperial government requisitioned copper and nickel for war production. Municipal authorities across Germany were forced to improvise with whatever base metals remained available, and iron — cheap, abundant, and strategically irrelevant — became the default substitute in dozens of smaller towns. Rügenwalde is now Darłowo, Poland, its German civic history largely erased by the postwar population expulsions of 1945–46.