Devices? What Devices? 04

All would be clear if only we knew his name! Between Bavarian award rolls and the May 1939 Beamten Seniority List, his status and exact awards would be known.

His perfectly made South German ribbon bar is

1914 EK2

Bavarian Military Merit Order (or Cross) on the war merit aka "Beamtenband" ribbon

Hindenburg Cross

Bavarian Luitpold Army Jubilee Medal of 1905 or 1911

Bavarian Army Long Service award

OK, so the Bavarian fashion of NOT wearing swords on their MMO/MMC doesn't help. And there WERE awards with this ribbon that did NOT have swords-- but in such limited numbers and to such specific sorts of recipients that we can take as a given that our paymaster--whatever his rank was at that time--got this ribbon with an Order or Cross that DID have swords which he has simply chosen not to display.

The Hindenburg Cross without swords for noncombatants does not seem to match a frontline combatant 1914 Iron Cross. There WERE 6,855 extremely peculiar awards of "combatant" Iron Crosses given during and after WW1 for "war merit in the homeland." So it is entirely possible this this Keitel-clone's two wartime decorations do indeed match with a stay at home Hindenburg Cross.

Orrrrrrrr... he is simply not wearing ANY devices, for consistency if not accuracy-- as seen in major Harss's scans preceding these.

Finally, his "Old Wehrmacht" Bavarian military long serice award should have been replaced, if he was a recaalled (E) career officer in the late 1930s OR a "war's duration" retread during the war, by the "New Wehrmacht" equivalents. Unless it was a Reserve/Landwehr class which had no Third Reich equivalent.

So is he an Oberstabszahlmeister dB zV... or just wearing (see scan) "Old Ribbon Bar For New?"

Courtesy of Robert Noss.