1 Pfennig - Mönchengladbach Gebrüder Meer

Gebrüder Meer was one of the major textile manufacturers operating in the lower Rhine region during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and like many large German industrial employers of the period, the firm issued its own token coinage — Werksgeld — for use within its factory stores and canteen system. These pieces kept wages circulating internally rather than leaking into local retail, a practice tolerated and even encouraged before the Weimar-era reforms tightened restrictions on private emergency and industrial currency.

Zinc was the practical choice for low-denomination factory tokens; cheap, easily struck, and of no intrinsic value worth hoarding.