5 Pfennig - Schmölln

Issued by the Schmölln city council in 1918, this is Notgeld — emergency coinage struck by a municipality to compensate for the wholesale disappearance of Reich small change during the First World War. By that point the German civilian economy had been effectively stripped of copper and nickel coinage, as the military consumed base metals at a rate the Reichsbank could not replace in circulation. Hundreds of towns issued their own stopgap pieces, most in zinc, cardboard, or iron. Schmölln, a small leather-goods manufacturing town in Thuringia, was entirely typical in this respect.

Funck 478.1 distinguishes this piece from later municipal issues that shaded into the collectible Notgeld craze of 1920–21.