5 Pfennig - Gleiwitz Drahtwerke

Gleiwitz (now Gliwice, Poland) was a major industrial center in Upper Silesia, and the Drahtwerke — a wire manufacturing operation — issued these iron notgeld tokens during the acute small-change shortage that gripped Germany in the early 1920s. Private industrial firms across Silesia routinely paid workers in proprietary tokens redeemable only at company-controlled stores, a practice that effectively trapped wages within the issuing enterprise.

Iron was the practical choice for factory-issued pieces: cheap, locally available, and unlikely to be hoarded. Most survived only as long as the issuing firm honored them.