1 Mark Dortmund Zeche Roland Harpener Bergbau-Aktien-Gesellschaft

Zeche Roland was one of several collieries operated by Harpener Bergbau-AG, the Dortmund-based mining corporation that by the early twentieth century had grown into one of the Ruhr's dominant coal producers. This piece belongs to the wave of industrial notgeld issued during the acute coin shortages of 1917–1918, when the wartime requisitioning of copper and nickel for munitions production left the civilian economy starved of small change. Mining companies were logical issuers — they ran closed economic ecosystems of company housing, company stores, and payroll systems that made local scrip administratively straightforward to implement and redeem.

Zinc was the default metal by this stage, brass and iron having already cycled through as substitutes.