20 Pfennig - Kulmbach Spinnerei

Industrial notgeld issued by a textile manufacturer in Kulmbach, Bavaria — almost certainly during the acute small-change shortages of World War I, when the Imperial government's metal requisitions drained iron, copper, and zinc from civilian circulation simultaneously. Factory-issued scrip of this type was redeemable only within the issuing company's own economic orbit: the mill canteen, the company store, wages paid in fractional denominations that workers could spend nowhere else.

Iron was the emergency substitute of last resort for municipal and corporate token issuers once zinc and aluminum grew scarce after 1916.