Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
1 Heller Mauthausen PoW Camp
| Issuer | K.u.k. Kriegsgefangenenlager Mauthausen (Imperial and Royal Prisoner of War Camp Mauthausen) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1914-1915 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 1 Heller (0.01) |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Plain white paper voucher printed in black letterpress. The Imperial and Royal Austrian double-headed eagle coat of arms appears as a vignette at the left, with the camp authority title along the top border. The denomination "Ein 1 Heller" is set in bold type at centre, below which appear the printed signatures of the Verwaltungsoffizier and Lagerkommandant, followed by a clause describing the voucher as a share certificate of prisoner deposits held by the Depositen-Verwaltung. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | K.u.k. Kriegsgefangenenlager Mauthausen. Ein 1 Heller Schwarz, Oblt. Verwaltungsoffizier. Nottes, G.M. Lagerkommandant. Dieser Betrag ist ein Anteilschein des bei der Depositenverwaltung deponierten Guthabens der Kriegsgefangenen. |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
Mauthausen, at this point in the war, was a transit and holding facility for prisoners taken during the opening campaigns on the Eastern Front — overwhelmingly Russian and Serbian captives flooding an Austro-Hungarian administrative system wholly unprepared for the numbers. Camp scrip at this scale was a logistical response, not a monetary experiment: prisoners needed a means of exchange within the canteen system, and Austrian authorities needed to prevent imperial currency from circulating outside the wire.
The 1 Heller denomination is the lowest in the Mauthausen series, which itself is among the earliest documented Austrian PoW camp issues. Schwarz's countersignature as Verwaltungsoffizier — the administrative officer responsible for camp finances — appears alongside Nottes as Lagerkommandant, a dual-authorization arrangement common to military scrip of this period to discourage internal forgery.