Carl Menzel & Söhne was a porcelain and earthenware manufacturer in Lommatzsch, Saxony, one of hundreds of private firms that issued notgeld coinage in 1917 when the German imperial government's wartime metal requisitions had stripped circulation of virtually all copper and nickel. Zinc was the reluctant substitute — brittle, prone to corrosion, and universally disliked by the public — but it was what the munitions economy left available.
Factory-issued pieces like this one were redeemable only within a specific commercial or industrial network, which is precisely why so many survived uncirculated.
Carl Menzel & Söhne was a porcelain and earthenware manufacturer in Lommatzsch, Saxony, one of hundreds of private firms that issued notgeld coinage in 1917 when the German imperial government's wartime metal requisitions had stripped circulation of virtually all copper and nickel. Zinc was the reluctant substitute — brittle, prone to corrosion, and universally disliked by the public — but it was what the munitions economy left available.
Factory-issued pieces like this one were redeemable only within a specific commercial or industrial network, which is precisely why so many survived uncirculated.