20 Mark Celle PoW Camp

Cellelager was one of the larger German officer prisoner-of-war camps of the First World War, and its internal currency was a practical administrative solution to a recognized problem: keeping Allied officers from accumulating Reichsmarks that could fund escape attempts. Camp scrip confined purchasing power to the canteen and kept hard currency out of prisoner hands.

Himmer of Augsburg was a competent commercial printer with no particular specialization in security printing, which shows — the production values are modest and forgery resistance minimal. That was accepted risk in a closed, supervised environment where the issuing authority could simply demonetize the series if abuse occurred.