1 Pfennig - Ruhla Thiel and Schuchardt

Ruhla, a small town in the Thuringian Forest, became one of Germany's most concentrated industrial pockets in the 19th century, with factories producing everything from pipes to pocket watches. Thiel & Schuchardt operated there as part of this manufacturing cluster, and like many German firms during the notgeld era, issued their own fractional token coinage when small change evaporated from circulation — particularly acute during and after the First World War when base metals were pulled for war production.

Zinc was the fallback material of the period, used precisely because it had little strategic value compared to copper or nickel.