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1 Pfennig Köln; Officer PoW Camp
| Issuer | Offizier-Gefangenenlager Köln am Rhein |
|---|---|
| Year | 1918 |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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| Obverse description | Orange and grey letterpress voucher with a dense guilloche underprint border. The heading 'OFFIZIER-GEFANGENENLAGER / KÖLN A, RH.' appears at top, flanked by the denomination '1 PFENNIG' repeated at left and right within 'GUT FÜR' legends. A central guilloche rosette carries a serial number, below which the Kommandant's manuscript signature and the date '1. Oktober 1918' are printed. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | OFFIZIER-GEFANGENENLAGER KÖLN A, RH. GUT FÜR 1 PFENNIG DER KOMMANDANT: Köln am Rhein 1. Oktober 1918 KEIN OFFENTLICHES ZAHLUNGSMITTEL M. DuMont Schauberg, Köln. |
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| Comments |
Offizier-Gefangenenlager Köln am Rhein was an officers' prisoner-of-war camp operating under the constraints of the 1907 Hague Conventions, which required Germany to provide detained officers with separate accommodation and a monthly stipend — creating a genuine internal economy that these camp pfennig notes were designed to service. The 1 Pfennig denomination is the lowest in this Cologne camp series, suggesting a functioning canteen price structure fine-grained enough to require fractional values.
M. DuMont Schauberg, the Cologne printer responsible for this note, was one of the city's oldest and most established printing houses — an almost ironic choice for an ephemeral piece of wartime scrip with a circulation measured in months.