25 Pfennig - Grafenau Papierfabrik Elsenthal

Elsenthal's paper mill, situated in the Bavarian Forest near Grafenau, issued this zinc notgeld piece during the acute small-change shortage that gripped Germany in 1920 as the postwar economy struggled to stabilize. Private industrial firms across Bavaria resorted to minting their own subsidiary coinage when the Reichsmint could not keep pace with demand — a paper factory paying its workers in metal tokens it struck itself is an unremarkable irony of the period.