5 Pfennigs Holzminden; Officer PoW Camp

Holzminden was among the most notorious German officer prisoner-of-war camps of the First World War — overcrowded, deliberately punitive in its administration under Hauptmann Karl Niemeyer, and the site of the largest successful tunnel escape by Allied officers in July 1918. This camp scrip predates that escape by roughly a year, issued to give captive officers a controlled means of purchasing from the canteen while preventing any accumulation of Reichsmark currency that might fund an escape attempt.

J. C. König & Ebhardt were a well-established Hannover commercial printer with no particular connection to security printing — their involvement here reflects wartime pragmatism rather than any official banknote production mandate.