5 Pfennigs - Crailsheim Wilh. Habermeier

Wilh. Habermeier was a hardware merchant in Crailsheim, a small Württemberg market town, who issued this zinc notgeld token during the acute small-change shortage that gripped Germany from 1916 onward. Wartime metal requisitioning had pulled copper and nickel coinage out of circulation almost entirely, forcing hundreds of individual merchants and municipalities to produce their own fractional pieces. Habermeier's issue is catalogued under both Menzel and Hasselmann, suggesting it circulated widely enough to be well-documented despite its purely local commercial origin.