2 Pfennig - Heldrungen Gewerkschaft Heldrungen II

Gewerkschaft Heldrungen II was a mining cooperative operating in the Heldrungen district of Thuringia, and like many small industrial operations of the German states, it issued its own token coinage to pay workers in scrip redeemable only at the company store — a practice that kept wages circulating internally and reduced the cooperative's dependence on official small change, which was chronically scarce in rural industrial communities throughout the nineteenth century.