50 Pfennig - Elberfeld

Elberfeld issued this zinc notgeld piece in 1917 as the war economy stripped conventional coinage metals entirely from civilian use. The city — then an independent industrial center in the Wupper valley before its forced merger into the newly created city of Wuppertal in 1929 — administered its own emergency currency through the worst of the wartime shortages. Zinc was the compromise material: abundant enough to machine, stable enough to circulate, but deeply unpopular with the public accustomed to nickel and copper.