The Eisenach Fahrzeugfabrik began as a bicycle manufacturer in the 1890s before pivoting to automobiles — it would eventually become the Dixi works, where BMW got its foothold in car production after acquiring the plant in 1928. This token was issued as factory notgeld, a practice that proliferated across German industrial sites during the acute small-change shortages of World War I and its immediate aftermath, when zinc itself was a war material and official coinage had largely vanished from daily transactions. Workers received these pieces as fractional wage tokens redeemable at the company canteen or store.
The Eisenach Fahrzeugfabrik began as a bicycle manufacturer in the 1890s before pivoting to automobiles — it would eventually become the Dixi works, where BMW got its foothold in car production after acquiring the plant in 1928. This token was issued as factory notgeld, a practice that proliferated across German industrial sites during the acute small-change shortages of World War I and its immediate aftermath, when zinc itself was a war material and official coinage had largely vanished from daily transactions. Workers received these pieces as fractional wage tokens redeemable at the company canteen or store.