50 Pfennigs - Kripp am Rhein Kripper Lederfabrik

Kripper Lederfabrik G.m.b.H. was a leather goods manufacturer in Kripp, a small Rhine village now absorbed into Remagen. This token belongs to the wave of privately issued Notgeld that flooded Germany between 1917 and 1923, when wartime metal shortages and later hyperinflation forced factories, municipalities, and shops to mint their own emergency substitutes. Industrial firms like this one issued scrip redeemable at company stores or canteens — a system that kept production running when workers couldn't be paid in reliable currency.

Zinc was the material of necessity here; copper and nickel had been requisitioned for the war effort well before 1917.