5 Mark Eglosheim; PoW Camp

Eglosheim, a small town near Ludwigsburg in Württemberg, hosted one of the many German prisoner-of-war camps established after the opening mobilizations of 1914. Camp scrip of this type was a practical administrative measure — it prevented prisoners from accumulating Reichsmark currency usable beyond the wire, while still allowing internal canteen and labor-credit transactions. The yellow paper is not decorative; color-coding was the primary anti-counterfeiting and denomination-control mechanism in most German PoW camp issues, since engraved security printing was never applied to these notes.

Campa 2926 places this among the documented Württemberg camp issues, but surviving examples from Eglosheim are genuinely scarce relative to larger camp series like Darmstadt or Quedlinburg.