50 Pfennigs Holzminden; Officer PoW Camp

Holzminden opened in 1917 as a camp for Allied officers, and it ran under Hauptmann Karl Niemeyer — a man so despised by his prisoners that they nicknamed him "Milwaukee Bill" for his exaggerated claims of having lived in America. Niemeyer's erratic administration became notorious enough to attract official British complaints, and the camp's internal currency was part of a deliberate policy of isolating prisoners economically from the surrounding population.

J. C. König & Ebhardt, primarily a bookbinding and printing house in Hannover, handled a number of these Lagergeld contracts during the war. Holzminden is better remembered today for the tunnel escape of June 1918 — twenty-nine officers got clear, ten made it home — than for its scrip.