50 Pfennig - Obergrainau u. Untergrainau

Obergrainau and Untergrainau are two small Bavarian villages at the foot of the Zugspitze, and their decision to issue a joint municipal notgeld in 1917 reflects just how far wartime metal shortages had penetrated into rural Germany. By mid-war, the imperial government had requisitioned copper and nickel so thoroughly that even villages of a few hundred inhabitants were left without adequate small change, forcing local authorities to improvise. Zinc was the fallback material across hundreds of such issues — workable, abundant enough, but prone to corrosion, which accounts for the surface degradation seen on most surviving examples.