10 Pfennig - Alfeld Fagus G.M.B.H.

Fagus G.M.B.H. issued this notgeld token during the acute small-change shortages that plagued German industry in the early 1920s. The Fagus factory in Alfeld an der Leine — a shoe-last manufacturing plant designed by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer in 1911 — was among thousands of private firms forced to produce their own emergency coinage when the Reichsbank could not keep pace with inflation-driven coin hoarding. Zinc was the practical choice: cheap, available, and already familiar to wartime mint operations.