50 Pfennig

Konstanz Notgeld from this period belongs to the first wave of German municipal emergency currency — driven not by postwar hyperinflation but by the wartime coin shortage that began around 1917, when Reichsbank metal reserves were stripped for munitions. City councils across Germany were effectively forced into the printing business. Konstanz, sitting hard against the Swiss border, had particular incentive to act: Swiss coins regularly crossed over and never came back, accelerating local small-change scarcity beyond what the rest of the Reich experienced.

The city printed its own notes rather than relying on a trade printer, which accounts for the modest production quality seen across the series.