10 Pfennig Kalksandstein-Werke Milbertshofen

Kalksandstein-Werke Milbertshofen was a sand-lime brick manufacturer operating on the northern edge of Munich — Milbertshofen being the industrial district later absorbed into greater Munich and notorious in darker history as the site of a wartime forced-labor camp. This 10 Pfennig note is a piece of Notgeld, the emergency small-change currency issued by German municipalities, businesses, and institutions during the acute coin shortages of 1914–1923. A brickworks issuing its own scrip is unremarkable for the period; hundreds of industrial firms did the same.

What makes factory-issued Notgeld interesting is the closed-loop economy it implies — workers paid partly in company scrip redeemable only at company-approved outlets.