1 Pfennig Gardelegen; PoW Camp

Mannschaftsgefangenenlager Gardelegen was one of hundreds of German prisoner-of-war camps that issued their own internal scrip during the First World War — a direct consequence of the Reich's policy requiring camps to operate self-contained economies, preventing PoWs from accumulating Reichsmark currency that might fund escapes. The 1 Pfennig denomination is the lowest practical unit, used for canteen transactions where exact change in real coinage was both scarce and prohibited.

The serial number strip is the only concession to anti-counterfeiting, which tells you something about the threat model: forgery by prisoners using camp materials, not external duplication.