drmessimer

I am a new arrival on this forum but this is a subject that is near and dear to my heart. I am the author of two books on the U-Deutschland; The Merchant U-Boat (Naval Institute Press, 1988) and The Baltimore Sabotage Cell: German Agents, American Traitors, and the U-Boat Deutschland During World War I (Naval Institute Press 2015). I was hoping to find a slot here to discuss the entire Commercial U-Boat project (1915-1917) and collecting the many artifacts, coins, and awards it produced. But it looks like I am a bit of a square peg in a round hole. But while I am here I will take the opportunity to answer this ten-year-old question in some detail. While the U-Deutschland was in Baltimore in July 1916, Captain Paul König donated 2,000 tons of the boat’s cast iron ballast to the Baltimore chapter of the Verein für Deutschtum im Ausland (VDA), a German cultural organization that was headquartered in Berlin. The VDA commissioned the Baltimore sculptor, Hans Schuler, Sr., (1884-1951) to design several souvenirs to be made from the boat’s cast iron ballast, and then gave the ballast to the Prisoners of War Relief Committee, a New York City-based charity, to find manufacturers and handle the sales of souvenirs. The first souvenirs made were these large Iron Crosses that the Baltimore iron works, G. Krug and Son, cast in late 1916. The 1.25-inch brass-plated-white-metal medallion that is embedded in the center on each side is not made from the boat's metal, only the cross is. Several hundred of these iron crosses were sold along the United States Eastern Seaboard until April 1917. When the United States declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917, the Prisoners of War Relief Committee returned the remaining U-Deutschland Crosses to the VDA in Baltimore for safekeeping. Fearing that the United States Government would seize the crosses, the VDA hid the remaining crosses until the end of the war. In 1932, Paul König acquired the entire remaining stock of these Iron Crosses from the VDA during a speaking tour on the East Coast. He took them back to Germany, and donated them to the VDA Chapter in Bremen. As late as WWII, the Bremen VDA chapter awarded the crosses to its members for loyal service. Dwight