1917 ND 1 Mark Ströhen Officer POW Camp

Ströhen was a dedicated officer prisoner-of-war camp in Lower Saxony, and like many German military internment facilities during World War One, it issued its own internal currency to control commerce within the wire. These Lagergeld notes circulated exclusively inside the camp — Allied officers could not spend them outside, and German guards had no use for them. The system was partly administrative, partly a tool for preventing escapes funded by convertible money.

Officer camps operated under the Hague Convention's rules on POW treatment, which meant inmates retained certain privileges — including regulated canteen access — and internal scrip made that manageable without introducing Reichsmarks into a tightly monitored environment.

Ströhen's notes from this period are among the more obscure camp issues, with very little documented circulation data surviving the postwar destruction of camp records.