10 Heller POW - Mauthausen

Mauthausen in 1918 was an Austro-Hungarian prisoner-of-war camp holding tens of thousands of men — Russians, Italians, Serbs, Romanians — at a site that would later become notorious for entirely different reasons under a different regime. Camp scrip of this kind was a practical administrative tool: it kept prisoners from accumulating currency redeemable outside the wire, and it controlled what could be purchased at the camp canteen. The 10 Heller denomination placed it at the lowest tier of the internal economy.

These notes were produced for internal use only and had no validity beyond the camp perimeter. Very few survived the armistice — most were voided and discarded when the camps dissolved in late 1918.