Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
50 Pfennig Königstein an der Elbe; PoW Camp
| Issuer | Kriegsgefangenenlager Festung Königstein a.d. Elbe |
|---|---|
| Year | 1915 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Dondorf & Naumann, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (1850-1932) |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Firm light yellow paper with a black typeset border frame enclosing multi-line letterpress text. The denomination "FÜNFZIG PFENNIG" is set in bold display type at centre, with the numeral value repeated in each of the four corners. Issued date 1. Oktober 1915 appears at foot. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Uniface; the reverse is blank, showing only the plain light cream paper stock with show-through of the obverse letterpress text visible under raking light. |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
Festung Königstein — the Saxon hilltop fortress above the Elbe gorge — was pressed into service as an officers' prisoner-of-war camp in 1914, and the camp scrip followed almost immediately. Dondorf & Naumann, better known for their playing cards and decorative printing, produced the issue in Frankfurt; the watermarked paper was the primary safeguard against internal forgery in a closed camp economy where the notes could only be redeemed at the canteen.
Officers' camps operated under the 1907 Hague Convention, which prohibited forcing captured officers to work, leaving them with time and a degree of purchasing power that necessitated a functioning internal currency. The Königstein scrip is among the more carefully produced German PoW issues of 1915 — Dondorf & Naumann brought genuine craft to what were, elsewhere, often crudely typeset affairs.