landsknechte

I've got a handful of ribbon bars with that on on it. It haunted me for years. I eventually found a medal bar with that ribbon used with a Bavarian veteran's association medal attached. That's been my only lead, and the medal bar leaves a little bit of doubt because the medals clip on similar to this one.

The ribbon in the link you sent is slightly different. The one in the link has a thin blue edge stripe outside of the white, while the one on the medal bar has the white on the outside. Bit of a long story, but the ribbon on the bar is one of my weird research interests.

Found this photo buried on my hard drive. Anyone recognize the gold cross between the Hindenburg Cross and the long service medal?

Thank you so much for the info! I wonder why he omitted the Turkish decoration.

I'm in the process of trying to organize my collection a bit, and in so doing I'm revisiting some of my old bars. I posted this rather salty bar 15-ish years ago, suspecting that it might be identifiable given the rarity of the GSF3aX. Nothing came of it at the time, but I took another look at it today and got a hit! Only two people in the 1918 Naval Ranklist have the right grade of the White Falcon plus the Hamburg Hanseatic Cross. One was a doctor with a few additional decorations, and the other an artillery officer: Kapitänleutnant Martin Ratz. I've just barely started to look into his his history, but it looks like he was posted on a on everything from a Victorian era steamship (still rigged for sails), coastal artillery, a couple of dreadnoughts, to ultimately finish up the war on a captured Russian battleship. He spent the interwar period doing exactly what you might expect - working for a botanical supply company in Erfurt.. He went on to serve in WWII in some capacity, with the rank of Korvettenkapitän. He died during, or shortly after the war, and was buried in a military cemetery in Belgium.

Any idea what #6 might be?

I stumbled across this ribbon bar being offered for sale, and I'm utterly perplexed as to what I'm even looking at. The only scenario I can come up with that makes any sense is that the ribbon that looks like a WWII Ostfront Medal, is instead something else, and maybe we're looking at the bottom row of a double stacked ribbon bar. Anyone see something that I'm missing?

It looks the part, but I'm not sure if doubles of that Red Cross decoration would be possible. Also, the swords seem problematic for that sort of award. I suspect it's something like this:

Ignore the color shift in this pic, the original pic is a better representation in that regard. The stripes have that same sort of texture,

It certainly seems like a good match physically, and it makes more sense than anything else so far, They look like the blue and silver/gray ribbons that accompany some of the Bulgarian bravery decorations, but the blue is faded to (or has been replaced with) a dingy white. The peculiar stripes are the same style.

I've been struggling to find anything that matched, even if it didn't make a ton of sense. With that one, I was trying to figure out if it made sense with #4 being the medal version of the Prussian Crown Order, #5 being the FAM, and #6 being the Württemberg Military Merit Medal. With that scenario, I'm also left wondering how probable that there's no long service decoration. (I'm still trying to wrap by brain around the precedence either way.)

Is there anything at all to be gleaned from the level of the St. Michael they were awarded?

I've had this very Bavarian lapel bow for a while now, and wanted to give it a second look. As best I can tell: Bavarian Order of St. Michael 3 or 4 Bavaria King Ludwig Cross Bavaria Golden Wedding Anniversary Medal Bavaria Luitpold Cross for 40 years state service Bavaria Prinz Luitpold medal (seems more likely) or Saxe-Weimar White Falcon Saxe-Ernestine House Order Prussian Crown Order or Württemberg Friedrichs Order Obviously a dedicated career official of some sort, but what sort? Are there any clues to be had? In particular, what does the St. Michael tell us?

I don't know why I didn't catch it right off the bat, but #5 might be a really washed out Saxon Friedrich-August Medal.

Aha! He must have been awarded the MVO4X after January 1918. If I'm not mistaken, he was assigned to the SMS Prinzregent Luitpold at that point. By the way, do you know what might be referred to by the abbreviation RAMc? It appears in a number of the ranklist entries for him up until 1914, then disappears by 1916. I couldn't figure that one out, even with the section that explains the abbreviations and the hieroglyphics.