10 Pfennigs Wildemann; Officer PoW Camp

Wildemann, a small mining town in the Harz Mountains, hosted one of the German Empire's officer prisoner-of-war camps during the First World War. Under the 1907 Hague Convention, officer prisoners could not be compelled to work, which left camp administrations with the practical problem of facilitating daily purchases — canteen goods, tobacco, small luxuries — without allowing hard currency to circulate freely or be accumulated for escape funds. Localized camp scrip was the solution adopted across dozens of German PoW installations.

Notes from Wildemann survive in small numbers, almost entirely uncirculated in the technical sense — the camps closed abruptly in late 1918 and unspent scrip became immediately worthless.