50 Pfennig - Krümmel Fabrik Krümmel

Fabrik Krümmel was the Nobel explosives plant on the Elbe south of Hamburg, originally established by Alfred Nobel himself in 1865 as one of his first industrial-scale dynamite facilities. During both World Wars, the plant operated under severe labor shortages and cash scarcity, prompting management to issue zinc notgeld tokens for internal payroll use — redeemable at the factory canteen and company store, nowhere else. Zinc was the wartime compromise material after nickel and copper were requisitioned for munitions production, which gives this token a certain irony given what Krümmel was manufacturing.