5 Pfennig - Schönwald

Schönwald is a small Black Forest community, and its 1918 iron notgeld issue belongs to the vast emergency coinage wave that swept German municipalities as World War I drained the metal supply and disrupted Reichsbank distribution networks. Local governments, businesses, and even individual factories issued their own substitute pfennig coinage by the thousands of varieties. Iron was the default material — copper and nickel had long since been requisitioned for shell casings.

The Funck reference places this among catalogued municipal issues, though Schönwald pieces see limited auction appearances, suggesting modest original mintage or heavy attrition from the notgeld collector boom of the 1920s.