5 Pfennigs - Sohren Clemens Meinhardt

Notgeld issued by private individuals and small-town merchants was commonplace in Germany after 1914, when hoarding stripped small-denomination coinage from circulation almost overnight. Clemens Meinhardt of Sohren — a village in the Hunsrück region of Rhenish Prussia — issued this iron piece as a local substitute, accepted presumably within his own business and immediate community.

Iron was the material of necessity, not choice. By the time most municipal and private notgeld of this type was struck, copper and nickel had long been redirected toward the war effort.