5 Mark - Charlottenburg Deutsche Ton and Steinzeugwerke A. G.

Deutsche Ton & Steinzeugwerke A.G. was one of several German ceramics manufacturers pressed into emergency currency production during the notgeld crisis of the early 1920s, when municipal and corporate issuers scrambled to fill the void left by a collapsing Reichsmark coinage system. Porcelain notgeld occupied a peculiar niche — technically more durable than paper, yet fragile in ways paper never was, which accounts for the attrition rate among surviving examples.

The Charlottenburg facility was primarily an industrial stoneware producer. That a drainage-pipe manufacturer was issuing spendable currency in 1921 captures the administrative desperation of the period more precisely than any monetary history textbook does.