50 Pfennig - Schauenstein H. Heye Glasfabrik

H. Heye Glasfabrik was one of Germany's significant industrial glassmakers, and like hundreds of German factories and municipalities in 1921, it issued its own notgeld to compensate for a chronic shortage of small-denomination coinage as postwar inflation eroded the Reichsbank's ability to supply circulating metal. Zinc was the pragmatic choice — aluminium and iron had been exhausted by wartime demand, and copper was effectively unavailable for private issue.

Schauenstein itself is a small town in Upper Franconia, Bavaria. That a single factory there felt compelled to mint its own currency speaks directly to how completely the national monetary system had fragmented by the early 1920s.