The Mansfeldsche Gewerkschaft was a copper mining cooperative operating in the Mansfeld region of Saxony-Anhalt — one of the oldest continuously worked copper deposits in Europe, with documented extraction dating back to the twelfth century. By 1917, wartime metal requisitions had stripped Germany's small-denomination coinage almost entirely from circulation, forcing municipalities, factories, and industrial cooperatives to issue their own emergency money. This piece is part of that broader Notgeld wave, struck in silver — an unusual choice at a moment when silver was itself a controlled commodity.
The Mansfeldsche Gewerkschaft was a copper mining cooperative operating in the Mansfeld region of Saxony-Anhalt — one of the oldest continuously worked copper deposits in Europe, with documented extraction dating back to the twelfth century. By 1917, wartime metal requisitions had stripped Germany's small-denomination coinage almost entirely from circulation, forcing municipalities, factories, and industrial cooperatives to issue their own emergency money. This piece is part of that broader Notgeld wave, struck in silver — an unusual choice at a moment when silver was itself a controlled commodity.