50 Pfennig - Offenbach Karl Ruland

Issued in 1918 by a private merchant in Offenbach am Main, this zinc piece belongs to the vast wave of Notgeld that flooded German commerce as the Imperial government's wartime metal requisitions drained copper and nickel from civilian circulation. Karl Ruland's issue was a local solution to a local problem — small change had effectively vanished from retail trade by mid-war. Zinc was the material of necessity; the same metal was being pulled from household pipes and church organ pipes across the Reich for munitions production.