1 Reichspfennig Lagergeld

Lagergeld — camp money — was issued by the OKW to control purchasing power within prisoner-of-war camps, a system the Wehrmacht used to technically comply with Article 24 of the 1929 Geneva Convention requiring that POWs be paid for their labor. The scrip was non-convertible and accepted only at camp canteens, meaning the real value to a prisoner depended almost entirely on what those canteens actually stocked, which varied enormously and deteriorated sharply after 1942.

The 1 Reichspfennig denomination is the lowest in the OKW Lagergeld series, and surviving examples are disproportionately common — small denominations circulated heavily and were rarely worth hoarding or smuggling out. Higher denominations tell a different survival story.