10 Heller Mauthausen; PoW Camp

Mauthausen was one of the larger Austro-Hungarian POW camp complexes during the First World War, holding tens of thousands of Russian, Serbian, and Italian prisoners at various points. Camp scrip of this type was issued to prevent prisoners from accumulating currency that could fund escape attempts or be used for external transactions — the Heller denominations were deliberately small to keep individual purchasing power within the canteen system tightly controlled.

Most camp issues from Austrian facilities were printed on whatever paper was available and were destroyed or simply discarded at war's end. Surviving examples are almost entirely from collector acquisitions made in the immediate postwar years.