5 Pfennig - Ludwigshafen am Rhein BASF

BASF issued these zinc tokens in 1918 as Germany's wartime metal shortages made official small-denomination coinage effectively disappear from circulation. The Reichsbank's inability to supply adequate Kleingeld forced hundreds of private firms and municipalities to issue their own notgeld — BASF among them, supplying internal scrip primarily for use in its factory canteens and workers' facilities at Ludwigshafen. By 1918, BASF was one of the largest chemical manufacturers in the world, deeply embedded in the German war effort through its nitrogen fixation plants producing synthetic ammonia for explosives.