20 Heller Steyr; Civilian Island Camp

The Ennsleite camp at Steyr was one of the large Habsburg internment installations that held civilian detainees — predominantly Ruthenians, Italians, and South Slavs — swept up under the wartime policy of mass preventive detention that the imperial authorities pursued with particular aggression after 1914. The K. u. k. Militärbauaufsicht II, the military construction supervision office responsible for administering the site, issued this Lagergeld to control purchasing within the camp economy and prevent Austrian currency from circulating among a captive population deemed politically unreliable.

Haas & Comp. were a local Steyr firm, not a specialist security printer, which accounts for the modest execution typical of this series.