1 Pfennig - Gleiwitz Drahtwerke

Gleiwitz (now Gliwice, Poland) was a major industrial center in Upper Silesia, and the Drahtwerke — a wire manufacturing operation — issued notgeld tokens like this one during the acute small-change shortages that plagued German industry in the early 1920s. Factory-issued pfennig tokens were a practical solution: workers received them as part of wage disbursements and spent them at company facilities, keeping currency circulating within a closed economic loop. The region's contested status following the 1921 Upper Silesia plebiscite added a layer of instability to ordinary commerce that made private token issues all the more common.