5 Pfennig - Traunstein

Traunstein's 1918 zinc notgeld issue belongs to the wave of emergency municipal coinage that flooded Bavaria and the rest of Germany as wartime metal requisitions stripped copper and nickel from civilian circulation entirely. By mid-1918, the imperial government had been siphoning non-ferrous metals for munitions since 1915, leaving local authorities to plug the small-change gap themselves. Zinc was the compromise material — cheap, still available, and deeply unpopular with the public for its tendency to corrode in pocket moisture.