50 Pfennig - Cöln-Bayenthal Franz Herrmann Maschinenfabrik

Franz Herrmann's machine factory in Cöln-Bayenthal issued this zinc notgeld during the acute small-change shortages that paralyzed German commerce in the early 1920s. Firms of this type — industrial manufacturers with regular payrolls — often printed or struck their own emergency scrip simply to make wage payments possible when Reichsbank coin had vanished from circulation entirely.

Zinc was the material of necessity, not preference. The Menzel catalog reference places this squarely among thousands of privately issued German industrial tokens, most struck in tiny quantities for a single factory's internal use.