1 Pfennig - Eisleben Mansfeldsche Gewerkschaft

The Mansfeldsche Gewerkschaft was one of Germany's oldest copper-mining operations, tracing continuous extraction in the Mansfeld basin back to the fifteenth century. By 1918, wartime metal requisitions had stripped Germany's coin supply so thoroughly that hundreds of industrial firms, municipalities, and cooperatives began issuing their own emergency pfennig pieces — Kriegsnotgeld — simply to make change for workers' wages. A mining company paying its own employees in company-struck zinc tokens was not unusual; it was a necessity.

Zinc was chosen precisely because copper and nickel had been commandeered for the war effort.