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10 Korona POW Camp; Somorja

Issuer K.u.K. Kriegsgefangenenlager Somorja (Cs. és K. Hadifogoly-Tábor Somorja)
Year 1916
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Currency Austro-Hungarian Krone (1892-1918)
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Reverse description Left panel mirrors the obverse layout with a guilloche vignette centred on the numeral 10 and the inscription GÜLTIG NUR INNERHALB DES KRIEGSGEFANGENENLAGERS in a cartouche below. The right panel repeats the Austro-Hungarian arms flanked by the series prefix DD and serial number, with the bold legend ZEHN KRONEN, a German-language deposit text, the date Somorja, 15 Jänner 1916, the camp title K.u.K. KRIEGSGEFANGENENLAGER SOMORJA, and two manuscript signatures with printed role titles.
Reverse lettering 10
ZEHN KRONEN
DIESER BETRAG IST EIN ANTEIL DES BEIM LAGERKOMMANDO ERLIEGENDEN GUTHABENS DER KRIEGSGEFANGENEN.
SOMORJA, 15 JÄNNER 1916
K.u.K. KRIEGSGEFANGENENLAGER
SOMORJA
LAGERKOMMANDANT
KASSAKOMMISSIONSMITGLIED
GÜLTIG NUR INNERHALB DES KRIEGSGEFANGENENLAGERS
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Comments

Austro-Hungarian prisoner-of-war camp scrip occupies a specific and underappreciated corner of WWI notaphily. The Somorja camp — located in present-day Šamorín, Slovakia, then part of the Kingdom of Hungary — issued internal currency to prevent POWs from accumulating spendable money that could fund escape attempts or be passed to the local population. The dual-language issuer name reflects the K.u.K. administrative reality: German for the imperial military bureaucracy, Hungarian for the local civilian authority.

Camp scrip from this period survives in wildly uneven quantities. Somorja issues are genuinely scarce.

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