Gotthelf Heimann & Co. was a textile and notions wholesaler in Halle an der Saale that, like hundreds of German commercial firms in 1918, resorted to issuing its own zinc Notgeld as the Imperial government's war requisitioning stripped copper and nickel from the civilian money supply entirely. These privately-issued merchant tokens occupied a legal grey zone — tolerated by authorities desperate to keep small transactions moving as official coinage vanished from circulation.
Gotthelf Heimann & Co. was a textile and notions wholesaler in Halle an der Saale that, like hundreds of German commercial firms in 1918, resorted to issuing its own zinc Notgeld as the Imperial government's war requisitioning stripped copper and nickel from the civilian money supply entirely. These privately-issued merchant tokens occupied a legal grey zone — tolerated by authorities desperate to keep small transactions moving as official coinage vanished from circulation.