50 Pfennig - Karlstadt am Main Portland Cementfabrik

Issued by a private cement manufacturer during the acute metal shortages of 1917, this is Kriegsgeld in the strictest sense — not a municipal emergency issue but a factory-issued token, circulated locally to substitute for coinage the war economy had effectively eliminated. Germany's copper and nickel were being consumed by the military, leaving industrial towns like Karlstadt with almost no small change in circulation. The Portland-Cementfabrik's decision to strike iron substitutes reflects how far down the supply chain that shortage had reached.