10 Pfennig - Schauenstein H. Heye Glasfabrik

H. Heye Glasfabrik was one of hundreds of German industrial firms that issued their own notgeld coinage during the inflationary crisis of the early 1920s, when the central government could not produce small-denomination coins fast enough to meet demand. Zinc was the obvious choice — cheap, available, and already familiar from wartime emergency coinage. Schauenstein, a small town in the Frankenwald region of Bavaria, was home to this glassworks, which had operated since the nineteenth century and apparently had enough of a captive workforce to justify circulating its own tokens.