50 Pfennigs - Grossauheim Fahrzeugfabrik

Grossauheim's Fahrzeugfabrik — a vehicle manufacturing plant on the Main River east of Hanau — issued zinc notgeld during the acute small-change shortages that followed World War I, when the German state could not supply municipalities and private firms with adequate coinage. Industrial issuers like this one filled the gap through locally circulating emergency money, redeemable only within a narrow geographic and commercial radius. The zinc composition was a practical concession to postwar metal scarcity, not a deliberate choice.

The Hasselmann and Menzel references both catalog this as variety .3, indicating at least two earlier die states for this type.