50 Pfennig - Oldisleben

Oldisleben's 1917 zinc notgeld issue belongs to the first wave of municipal emergency coinage that flooded Germany after the imperial government requisitioned copper and nickel for war production. Small agricultural towns like Oldisleben — situated in the Kyffhäuserkreis district of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach — faced an acute shortage of small change by mid-1917, as official coinage vanished into hoarding and metal drives simultaneously. Local authorities were left to improvise.

Zinc was the compromise material: abundant enough to source, workable, but prone to corrosion and surface pitting in even moderate humidity. Survivors in clean condition are notably harder to find than the mintage figures suggest.