5 Pfennig - Neurath Gewerkschaft

Neurath was a Rhenish lignite mining operation whose output became critical during the early Weimar period, when coal shortages and runaway inflation made conventional wage payment increasingly impractical. Like dozens of other German industrial concerns in 1922, the Gewerkschaft issued its own notgeld-style metal tokens to cover small transactions within the works — the national coinage simply couldn't keep pace with demand as the mark collapsed. The Neurath mine would later be absorbed into what became one of the largest open-cast lignite complexes in Europe, but in 1922 it was still an independent operation scraping through the crisis on zinc.