50 Pfennig

Zeulenroda was a small textile town in the Reuss principality, and like hundreds of German municipalities in 1917, it issued its own emergency Kleingeld when coin metal was diverted entirely to war production. These Stadtgemeinde notes — Notgeld in the strictest early sense — were functional stopgaps, not the decorative collector series that flooded the market after 1920. The distinction matters: 1917 municipal issues were actually spent in local shops, handled daily, and rarely put aside.

Reuss-Obergreiz had dissolved as a sovereign entity just a year earlier when the two Reuss lines merged administratively, so the geographic qualifier on the issuing authority reflects a political arrangement already fading from practical relevance.