5 Korona POW Camp; Dunaszerdahely

Dunaszerdahely (today Dunajská Streda in Slovakia) housed an Austro-Hungarian prisoner of war camp during the First World War, and like dozens of similar installations across the empire, it issued its own internal currency to prevent prisoners from accumulating coins usable outside the wire. These Lagergeld issues were a deliberate policy of the k.u.k. military administration, standardized enough in concept but always locally produced — Globus in Budapest was a commercial printer, not a specialist security firm, which shows in the relatively modest production quality typical of the Hungarian camp issues.

The 5 Korona denomination was the highest commonly encountered in the Dunaszerdahely series, suggesting a degree of trust in internal camp commerce that smaller installations rarely extended.