5 Pfennig - Seitenberg, Grafschaft Glatz

Seitenberg was a small industrial village in the Glatz Valley, dependent on textile manufacturing, and its 1919 notgeld issue reflects the acute small-change famine that gripped Germany immediately after the armistice. The imperial coin supply had collapsed, copper and nickel had been diverted to the war effort for years, and municipalities across Silesia were left to fend for themselves. Iron was the obvious fallback — cheap, available, already familiar from wartime Reichsmünzen.

Grafschaft Glatz itself became politically contested territory almost immediately after this piece was struck, with the Paris Peace Conference briefly entertaining Polish claims to the region before leaving it within Germany.