5 Pfennig Köln; Officer PoW Camp

Offizier-Gefangenenlager Köln am Rhein was one of several German officer-grade internment facilities operating during the final year of the First World War, and like many such camps it issued its own internal scrip to manage transactions within the wire — preventing prisoners from accumulating Reichsmark currency that could fund escape attempts. The 5 Pfennig denomination is the smallest practical unit, suggesting these were issued alongside a ladder of higher values for canteen or mess use.

M. DuMont Schauberg, the Cologne press responsible for printing, was — and remains — one of Germany's oldest newspaper publishing houses, founded in the seventeenth century. Camp scrip was mundane contract work, but it localizes the note firmly to Cologne rather than to any central military printing authority.