5 Pfennig - Schmiegel

Schmiegel — today Śmigiel, in what is now western Poland — was a small Poznań province town issuing notgeld as the imperial German economy buckled under wartime metal shortages. By 1917, the Reich had already requisitioned copper and nickel for munitions, forcing municipalities down to iron for even the smallest denominations. These local iron pieces circulated in tight geographic pockets; a Schmiegel 5 Pfennig would have been useless two towns over.