10 Pfennig - Darmstadt E. Merck

E. Merck issued notgeld tokens during the post-WWI shortages not as a charitable gesture but out of operational necessity — small-denomination coinage had effectively vanished from circulation by 1918–1919, and factory payrolls depended on having something to hand workers for canteen and local transactions. The Darmstadt chemical and pharmaceutical firm, already one of the oldest family-owned pharmaceutical companies in the world by that point, was large enough to sustain its own token economy within its workforce.

Zinc was the material of last resort for emergency coinage of this period, chosen because strategic metals were exhausted or restricted.