50 Pfennig Königstein an der Elbe; PoW Camp

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.