50 Pfennig - Oberammergau

Issued in 1917 as one of thousands of German municipal emergency coins — Kriegsgeld — produced when the imperial government requisitioned copper and nickel for the war effort. Zinc was the compromise material, and most municipalities stamped their own necessity pieces rather than wait for central supply. Oberammergau is the Bavarian village whose Passion Play, performed every ten years since 1634 as a vow following a plague epidemic, gave it an identity entirely out of proportion to its population of a few thousand.