2 Mark Bautzen; PoW Camp

Prisoner-of-war camp scrip from Bautzen occupies a specific and well-documented corner of First World War notgeld collecting. The Kriegsgefangenen-Lager Bautzen held primarily Russian and later French and British prisoners, and camp-issued currency was a German military administration requirement — prisoners were paid for labor in scrip redeemable only within the camp economy, deliberately preventing contact with German civilian currency.

Alexander Lode was a local Bautzen printer, which confirms this was produced entirely in-house by the camp authority rather than through a centralized military printing contract. That local production accounts for the variation in print quality seen across the series.