5 Pfennige

Züllichau — now Sulechów in western Poland — was a small Prussian market town, and this 5 Pfennige Notgeld emerged from the acute small-change shortage that gripped Germany from 1916 onward as metal was systematically redirected to munitions production. The Städtische Sparkasse issued it under municipal authority precisely because the Reichsbank had no mechanism to flood provincial towns with low-denomination substitutes quickly enough.

The manuscript signature and embossed or printed seal were the only authentication the issuer could practically manage at this scale. Forgery of five-pfennig card notes was rarely worth the effort, which is why the security measures remained minimal across virtually all comparable municipal issues of this period.