50 Pfennig - Torgau

Torgau issued this zinc notgeld in 1921 as Germany's postwar coin shortage dragged well into the third year of the Weimar Republic. The municipal authority, not the Reichsbank, bore responsibility for keeping small change in circulation — a situation that produced hundreds of distinct local emergency issues across Germany between 1917 and 1923. Zinc was the practical choice: cheap, available, and already familiar from wartime coinage.

Torgau itself sits on the Elbe in Saxony, a city whose name would later resonate far beyond Germany when American and Soviet forces linked up there in April 1945.