Neurath was a brown-coal mining operation in the Rhineland, and like hundreds of German industrial concerns in 1918, it resorted to issuing its own notgeld coinage when the imperial monetary system could no longer supply adequate small change during the final collapse of the war economy. Iron was the only practical option by that point — copper and nickel had long been commandeered for munitions production. These colliery tokens circulated among miners and local tradespeople as functional substitutes, redeemable in theory at the company's own facilities.
Neurath was a brown-coal mining operation in the Rhineland, and like hundreds of German industrial concerns in 1918, it resorted to issuing its own notgeld coinage when the imperial monetary system could no longer supply adequate small change during the final collapse of the war economy. Iron was the only practical option by that point — copper and nickel had long been commandeered for munitions production. These colliery tokens circulated among miners and local tradespeople as functional substitutes, redeemable in theory at the company's own facilities.