50 Pfennigs - Braunlage F.W. Fuchs

Braunlage, a small resort town in the Harz mountains, issued a wave of privately produced emergency coinage during the acute small-change shortages of 1917–1921. F.W. Fuchs was almost certainly a local merchant or innkeeper whose customers had no practical way to make change — Reichsbank coin had largely vanished from circulation, hoarded or melted. Zinc was the available material, not a preference.

The Hasselmann catalog documents multiple Fuchs types, suggesting this was not a one-off desperation piece but a deliberately issued series.