5 Mark Halbmondlager; PoW Camp

The Halbmondlager — Half Moon Camp — near Wünsdorf, south of Berlin, was a purpose-built facility holding Muslim prisoners of war, primarily from the British Indian Army, French colonial North Africa, and the Russian Caucasus. Germany's interest in these prisoners was explicitly political: the camp was central to the Deutsches Jihad-Büro's effort to incite a pan-Islamic uprising against the Entente colonial powers, a strategy backed by the Ottoman alliance. Prisoners received preferential treatment, a mosque, and their own internal currency to facilitate this propaganda environment.

The camp scrip circulated only within Wünsdorf's perimeter. Its existence as a monetary system was entirely contingent on that political project.