1 Pfennig Ellwangen; Officer PoW Camp

Ellwangen, a small town in Württemberg, housed one of Germany's officer-grade prisoner of war camps during the First World War. The internal scrip issued there was a practical administrative solution — Allied officers were entitled under the Hague Convention to receive pay, and camp authorities needed a controlled currency that couldn't be spent outside the wire. The Kassenkommission, the camp's own treasury committee, managed the issue directly rather than routing it through civilian banking channels.

The 1 Pfennig denomination is the lowest in the Ellwangen series, and low-value notes from camp scrip systems tend to survive in worse condition than higher denominations — they circulated hardest among men who had nothing else to do but use them.