5 Pfennig - Linden Hanomag

Hannoversche Maschinenfabrik AG issued its own notgeld coinage during the acute small-change shortages of the early Weimar period, when municipal and corporate token issues proliferated across Germany to fill the gap left by hoarded or melted official coinage. Hanomag was at the time one of Germany's largest producers of locomotives and agricultural machinery, later pivoting to automobiles in 1924 with the famously spartan Kommissbrot — but this iron piece dates from the industrial crisis years before that reinvention.

Iron was chosen out of necessity, not economy — nonferrous metals were still being diverted or restricted in the aftermath of wartime requisitioning.