5 Pfennig Lichtenhorst; Officer PoW Camp

Lichtenhorst was an officer prisoner-of-war camp in Lower Saxony operated during the First World War. Like many German PoW camps of that period, it issued its own internal scrip to allow prisoners to make purchases within the facility while preventing German currency from accumulating in enemy hands — a policy enforced across the camp system by the German military authorities.

Officer-grade camps ran on different economic terms than enlisted camps; officers received pay per the Hague Convention and needed a medium of exchange. That administrative necessity is why this note exists at all.