5 Pfennig - Tuttlingen Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse

Tuttlingen's Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse — a municipal health insurance fund — issued this zinc token in 1917 as wartime metal shortages forced German municipal and institutional bodies to produce their own subsidiary coinage. The AOK system, established under Bismarck's 1883 health insurance legislation, administered worker contributions and medical reimbursements; small-denomination tokens like this likely facilitated internal accounting or co-payment transactions among insured members when official coinage had largely vanished from circulation.