50 Pfennig - Sömmerda

Sömmerda issued this emergency coinage — Notgeld — in 1918 as the German imperial economy buckled under wartime metal requisitioning. The city, long associated with precision arms manufacturing through the Dreyse needle-gun works, found itself, like hundreds of German municipalities that year, printing and striking its own fractional currency simply to keep local commerce functioning.

Zinc was the fallback material after nickel and copper had been systematically redirected to military production since 1915.