50 Pfennig - Grünhain

Grünhain issued this cardboard notgeld during the acute metal shortages of 1917–18, when wartime requisitioning had stripped Germany's municipalities of the copper and nickel needed for small-denomination coinage. The Reichsbank's inability to supply adequate fractional currency pushed hundreds of small towns to print or stamp their own emergency pieces from whatever material was available — paper, cardboard, zinc, even porcelain.

Grünhain itself was a minor Saxon town, its economy anchored to the surrounding Erzgebirge mining district.