50 Pfennigs - Augsburg Eisenwerk Gebr. Frisch K.G.

Augsburg Eisenwerk Gebr. Frisch K.G. issued this zinc notgeld in 1918 as Germany's wartime metal requisitions had stripped conventional coinage from circulation almost entirely. Zinc itself was a war material, which makes factory-issued zinc tokens from this period a small irony — private firms substituting with the same metal the military was consuming. Frisch's ironworks, as an industrial concern, had both the pressing equipment and the institutional need to keep workers paid in fractional denominations when Reichsbank small change had effectively vanished from everyday commerce.